Over the summer, Tessa Thompson was spotted getting cozy with couple Taika Waititi and Rita Ora. The photos went viral, but as the Thor: Love and Thunder actress told ES Magazine, “This idea that we were caught in some private salacious moment is frankly just untrue. If you look at those images, nowhere are our lips touching. Those are just my friends. They remain my friends, they were just my friends that day, and they continue to be.”
Thompson was annoyed by the “gross invasion of privacy” of a moment between friends being photographed, but she did find one silver lining in all the discourse.
There was no censorious misogynistic commentary around the images, no moral policing. Five years ago, she reckons, there would have been. “So while I didn’t love being embroiled in all that, I think the public discourse around it was at least interesting, in terms of people celebrating that people can have a fun and free time and that’s okay,” she said.
Thompson’s new film, Passing, comes out on Netflix next week. It looks very good. In 2022, she’ll reprise her role as Valkyrie in Thor: Love and Thunder (directed by Waititi) and headline Steve Buscemi’s The Listener, where she plays a “helpline volunteer who is part of the small army that gets on the phone every night across America, fielding calls from all kinds of people feeling lonely, broken, hopeless, and worried.”
You can watch the Passing trailer below.
(Via ES Magazine)