In recent years, Tessa Thompson has become one of the biggest Hollywood stars, starring in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and the Men in Black franchise. And even before that, she’s already caught everyone’s attention as she portrayed a top exec replaced with a robot in HBO’s Westworld.
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To this day, however, not many may know exactly how Thompson got introduced to show business. Now, some may have assumed that her first gig was that guest role in Grey’s Anatomy when she was a young teen. Surprisingly though, Thompson had booked another onscreen role years before this.
She Trained To Be An Actor Early On
Even as she studied cultural anthropology in college, Thompson immersed herself in acting. She ended up interning for the all-women Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company. Soon enough, she scored her first regular gig, as Jane Cook in the hit tv series Veronica Mars. Fans of the show didn’t exactly embrace Jane initially, but the show found a way to reapproach the character and that seemed to do the trick.
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“The fan reaction was intense because Jackie was not very pleasant to Veronica, and of course she’s our hero,” Thompson recalled during an interview with Vanity Fair. “I think the writers, in an attempt to redeem Jackie and also make a compelling case for me to stick around, wanted to kind of soften her. As a result, she had a really fascinating character arc.”
Around this time, Thompson was also relatively new to on-screen character arcs. That said, she was no stranger to being in front of the cameras. After all, she landed her first role long before she even booked Veronica Mars role or appeared briefly in the Emmy-nominated series Cold Case.
This Was Her Actual First Onscreen Role
Believe it or not, Thompson first appeared onscreen when she was just a child. It wasn’t a for a film or television show. Rather, it was for a music video for the Brenda Russell song Stop Running Away. “In the video, I think it's this idea that we play the younger version of this married couple whose relationship is falling apart, and they're trying to get back to their child selves,” Thompson recalled during an interview for GQ. “I play this woman, and I'm in a wedding dress. We get married.”
The actress may have been young at that time. Nonetheless, she had a good understanding of the music video’s storyline. “I was six, but I remember that day feeling very adult, so it didn't scare me,” Thompson explained. “I felt like I was born for this."
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Despite the realization that she could pursue acting, it almost seemed like Thompson’s music video role was going to be a one-time thing. “I wasn’t on set again for over a decade after that,” she even confirmed. But she caught the acting bug again as a young teen. That said, Thompson wasn’t exactly pleased with her entertainment career even as she got more offers following her performance in Veronica Mars. In fact, she was almost willing to walk away from Hollywood for an indefinite period.
She Had To Deal With Casting Frustrations
When offers started coming, Thompson wasn’t happy. During that time in her career, “a lot of the parts that were coming my way were things that I’d seen before.” She was asked to play a single mom or the black best friend. There were also offers to star in slave dramas. In the end, Thompson didn’t like any of them and she let her agents that she wasn’t messing around. “I had all but decided to take a break and do some plays, and to see plays and read books and not work – literally not work,” the actress revealed during an interview with The Guardian. “Until I was going to burn for something.” That “something” eventually came in the form of a dark comedy satire that also starred Michael B. Jordan.
“I honestly felt like I hadn’t played a role like that before—it was multi-protagonist, and you had all these different ideas of what it is to be black,” Thompson said of her character in the film Dear White People. “I wrote [writer/director] Justin [Simien] a letter, which I had never done. I just felt so passionately about the script.” At the same time, the movie also inspired the actress to only pursue projects that absolutely feel right. “Getting to do it really changed my trajectory in the sense where I felt like, once I understood what that feeling is just to burn for something, I didn’t want to do anything after that I didn’t feel the same way about,” she said. “That's been the way I’ve approached looking at material since.”
Fans can look forward to seeing Thompson reprise her role as Valkyrie in the upcoming MCU film Thor: Love and Thunder. At the same time, she also stars in the Rebecca Hall film Passing, which Netflix had acquired the worldwide rights to.
