The consequences of all-too-human cruelty amid a zombie apocalypse. A queer reawakening in the thick of a 1950s rager. An urban legend summoned against the backdrop of a gentrifying Chicago. Over the last eight years, Nia DaCosta has amassed a filmography that ricochets from one high-octane setting to the next, without sacrificing the strikingly intimate character studies that anchor each feature. The breadth of her work as a director is matched only by the breakneck speed at which she’s moved between projects and genres. To develop the kind of career DaCosta has by the age of 36, you have to be, as she says, “a hustler.”
The Brooklyn native first landed in theaters in 2018, with Little Woods, a crime thriller starring Tessa Thompson as a reluctant drug dealer attempting to pay off her mother’s mortgage before foreclosure. By 2021, she was under the mentorship of Jordan Peele, with whom she wrote Candyman (her sophomore feature) in tandem with Win Rosenfeld. The modern-day ghost story made her the first Black female director with a number one debut at the U.S. box office. DaCosta then fired off The Marvels for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the highest-grossing film by a Black female director; the Golden Globe-nominated Hedda, a wild adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1890 play Hedda Gabler, also starring Thompson; and this January’s zombie epic 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the fourth installment in Danny Boyle’s cult series.
The string of high-profile projects caught the attention of fellow writer-director Ryan Coogler, who made headlines himself this year with Sinners, a character-driven vampire bloodfest that marks his fifth collaboration with actor Michael B. Jordan (following Fruitvale Station, Creed, and the Black Panther films). In the whiplash-inducing three-month interval between the release of Hedda and The Bone Temple—after which DaCosta swears she’ll be attempting some well-deserved time off—the pair sat down to discuss actor soulmates, crop-rotating genres, and how to scare your producers.
Ryan Coogler: First of all, congrats on the Golden Globes nominations.
Nia DaCosta: Oh, you mean nomination, babe. Congrats to you on the nominations, plural.
Coogler: Do you remember how we met, Nia?
DaCosta: I know it was through Tessa [Thompson], and I think it was when she was making Creed. I was her plus-one for five years, basically, so I would see you around. You were always so kind and lovely, and Zinzi [Coogler’s wife] is the best.
Coogler: It’s been a joy to watch you rise and conquer, and also shift in and out of different genres. My big question is, how do you handle the volume? You work so consistently.
DaCosta: After every job, I’m like, I’m never going to work again. There’s also that hustler mindset in my head of I need to say yes, say yes, say yes. I actually had to drop out of two other films to do Candyman and The Marvels. I have such a range of interests, and I was still exploring what I was passionate about enough to tell stories about.
Something like Candyman comes along, and it’s like, you can’t say no to that. I was also a big fan of the Marvel universe, including your films [Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever], so I didn’t say no. It was a big learning curve, going into the studio system right after my first indie film, Little Woods. Last year, I shot two films, which was insane. The Bone Temple situation was another one I couldn’t pass up. I think the pace will slow down a bit now.
Coogler: Your hustling mentality—did you learn it from somebody?
DaCosta: I think it comes from watching my mom reinvent herself over and over again. When I was growing up, she was a touring musician in a reggae girl group. For a lot of my childhood, she was touring with her band in Japan or the Caribbean or Europe, or on music video sets, or in the studio. My mom’s still in music, but she’s transitioned. She teaches at a college and sings at her church. I also grew up in New York, and the energy of New York is very much ambition, ambition, ambition. This is part of why I moved away. I love New York, but also—
Coogler: It’s too much, maybe.
DaCosta: It’s a bit much. After a while, it doesn’t feed you; it starts to drain you. I came to London for my master’s, and realized I really needed the balance thing.
Coogler: I feel like you’re never in the same place twice. It’s Candyman, then it’s a superhero adaptation, a stage adaptation, and back to epic horror. Do you find it rejuvenating to dip into all these things that are so different?
DaCosta: I do. At the beginning of my career, I had such a chip on my shoulder. I still always feel like I have to prove myself.
Coogler: Did you come with the chip, or did it come from seeing how everybody else reacted to you?
DaCosta: I came with it, for sure. It got bigger in film school, because those spaces are not made for Black women or our stories, at least in my experience. I had a good time, but it was a very white dude environment. I also knew going in that, for the stories I was interested in telling, the math would be different. As a filmmaker, I would be asked to do very specific projects. That ended up being true, especially after starting with an independent film.
I was very aware that I needed to prove that I could handle different genres and different-sized budgets. In a personal and not always healthy way, I also needed to prove this to myself. The chip never goes away, but it gets smaller, hopefully. Now, I’m in a place where I can do any kind of movie I’d like because I’ve made a huge movie and I’ve made small ones. That’s really what I wanted—freedom.
Coogler: I don’t know if you know [filmmaker] Blitz Bazawule? His grandmother is a farmer in Ghana. He shared the term “crop rotation” with me, rotating between plants that eat different nutrients. If you only got a little bit of land, crop rotation is big in terms of keeping the soil healthy. I think about that quite a bit. After this run, nobody’s going to ask the question, Can you do something? You say the chip is getting smaller. How do you know?
DaCosta: Because I feel less desperate to work. In fact, at the moment, I don’t want to work. I want to sleep. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want to do anything. But the thing that brings you back is how much you fucking love it. I had a Q&A today [for Hedda], and I was like, Oh, another Q&A. Am I going to show everyone this film personally? It was with Lindsay Pugh, my costume designer, and Sharon Martin, my hair and makeup designer. We were just talking about the film and their craft. I was like, Actually, I missed this. This is what I do it for. Being able to locate that love when I make something, as opposed to the terror, the fear, the needing to prove myself, that’s why I know the chip’s getting smaller.
“I’m in a place where I can do any kind of movie I’d like because I’ve made a huge movie and I’ve made small ones. That’s really what I wanted—freedom.” —Nia DaCosta
Coogler: What keeps you coming back to Tessa?
DaCosta: Oh, God. I’m trying to work with her on every movie, basically. We really connect as a director-actor pair. I understand her, but I’m still always surprised by her. I know that I can trust her with my set, with my crew, with my cast.
Coogler: That’s the thing with Mike [Michael B. Jordan], too. You know the movie’s going to be built on good bones—people will be respected and that it will be a democratic environment. Those qualities, they’re just not talked about. Acting is a hard job, and when somebody’s doing really difficult work, there’s more tolerance for things that shouldn’t be happening. It’s like, This dude had a tough day, so it’s okay if he yells at somebody, or if he’s a bit weird. You can do this job without making people feel less than.
With Mike, I feel like I can’t bring him the same type of thing—it has to be something new that will stretch us both. Do you feel like that with Tessa?
DaCosta: We both share this desire to see Black people—Black women—in genres and spaces we’re not usually in. When I talk to her about an idea, it’s either because I’m like, You need to be doing something at this level, in terms of character work, or it’s like, I want to see you in this world. I was just telling her the other day, “I want to see you in a sci-fi movie. I want to see you on a spaceship. I don’t know what you’re doing there, but that’s where you need to be.”
Coogler: Man, you and Tessa on a spaceship, I’m with that. How did you get into horror movies? You really fucking go for it. There were parts of Hedda where I was like, [screams].
DaCosta: It’s something about the tension. You want to give the audience something they’re not expecting. When I watch something, I want to be like, Wait, what the fuck? Excuse me? In Sinners, when the guy comes in with the guitar, I was like, “Ryan, what’s happening?” At the end, I was literally teary-eyed when homebro was twerking. I was like, Oh my God, he sees us. Then Jack O’Connell, who I love so much and who I just worked with on The Bone Temple, is doing his little Irish jig.
There’s a scene at the end of The Bone Temple, also involving Jack, also involving music, and when you see it in the script, you’re like, “This is going to ruin careers. This is impossible.” I know that when your producers read that part of the [Sinners] script, they were like, “Ryan, you can’t do this.” I just know it. But how successful that scene is—how fucking iconic—that’s what I want when I go into a theater.
Coogler: I’m blessed, man, because my producers know me real good. They know how fucking crazy I am. One of them is Zinzi. She knows me better than anyone. They’re rarely surprised by something I write. I’m addicted to that, too, man—the what the fuck moment. It’s the best feeling to be watching a movie, especially when you’re in the theater, and you can’t pause it. You’re on the ride, on the big screen. What’s your favorite screening you’ve ever done?
DaCosta: The TIFF premiere of Hedda. I couldn’t sit through the whole thing—I was feverish and shaking and had to leave. Everyone told me that TIFF audiences are great, but I was so nervous. This was my first time. When Little Woods came out, I was like, This is a small film. I’m begging people to watch it. I know it’s not going to do anything. With Candyman, it was the pandemic. I was like, Who even knows what today or tomorrow brings. The Marvels—I knew what that was going to be. When that came out, I literally didn’t even turn on the Internet.
Coogler: I know that feeling.
DaCosta: Hedda is me saying I know how to make movies. That is what I want to say right now. I know what I’m doing, and I care a lot about filmmaking. I’ve always had this thing about the audience being with you when you get the first laugh. At the screening, it happened before there was even an image on the screen. I was like, Oh my God, this might be going well. It felt like being seen. That’s, I guess, what we’re doing, isn’t it?
Stylist: Kat Typaldos
Stylist Assistant: Kassidy Taylor
Makeup Artist: Shannon Pezzetta
Hair Stylist: Araxi Lindsey
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