Why Ruth Negga’s Passing Role Is “Still Haunting” Her

Inhabiting the character of Clare, who poses as a white woman in 1920s Harlem, Passing star Ruth Negga cycled through “joy, fear, anxiety, manipulation, [and] devastating honesty” in quick succession. “Her whole life is a lie really, it’s based on a lie,” she tells Vanity Fair’s Cassie da Costa on this week’s Little Gold Men podcast. “But actually, weirdly, it gives her a freedom. And I don’t quite understand that still to this day. That’s why this role is still haunting me.”

Passing is a stunning directorial debut from Rebecca Hall, starring Negga and Tessa Thompson as childhood friends who now live on opposite sides of the color line. Negga, who earned an Oscar nomination for 2016’s Loving, found herself jolted by the ways she interpreted Nella Larsen’s classic 1929 novella. “It’s the first time I’ve actually been surprised by my own choices,” she says. “I had thought I was getting ready for possibly a destabling life force. And actually what I saw was several moments of deep vulnerability. . .Even playing this joyful, vivacious woman, at her heart, there is a great feeling of loss.”

Elsewhere on LGM, hosts Katey Rich, Richard Lawson, Rebecca Ford, and David Canfield dig into listener mailbag questions and analyze the Oscar races for best director and international feature.

Take a listen to the episode above, and find Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts. You can also sign up to text with us at Subtext—we’d love to hear from you.

Read a partial transcript of the Ruth Negga interview below.

Passing is a hyper-personal film for Rebecca Hall. But because its resonances both in racial identity, as well as in literally the appearance of people and how we perceive them, it feels a very personal story to anyone who identifies as Black or as a woman. What was your entry point into connecting both to the themes in this film, as well as your character, Clare?

I feel it’s hyper-personal for exactly those reasons. The thing is that literature, to me, has always been a place where I find refuge, but also where I can learn about myself. It’s a place where you can try on who you are in order to find out who you are, and I think that’s super important. And also, as a Black woman, I have found peace in literature. For me, it’s a feeling of being seen, it’s a feeling of comfort, it’s a feeling of community, whether that’s Zora Neale Hurston, or Dr. [William] Marston, or Dr. [Maya] Angelou, or indeed Nella Larsen. I’ve really felt that with both her books, Quicksand and Passing. 

In Passing, it’s this idea of moving from one community, which is the Black community, into the white community. [Then there’s] literally, passing, as in, there’s a death. The river Styx is always in my brain when I think about Passing, because it is a journey into an afterlife. You are leaving your previous life behind, you’re severing your connections to your family, your community, yourself, your previous self. And so, with Clare, it’s very much her Black community. What does that do to your identity when you are surrounded by people who perceive you as one thing when you’re actually not? And, for me, it’s more about my identity as Ruth. I grew up in a lot of different places and I think people are confused by my heritage, which is Irish and Ethiopian, because for a long time it was considered unique and exotic.

So, exoticism is something that was explored in Passing as well. And I’m not sure how to go about unpacking it, but when Clare talks in a wistful manner about wanting to be with Negros again, to hear them laugh. It makes me feel uncomfortable because it’s like she’s exoticizing her own-self and her community, and is that what passing does to someone? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Do we condone that, condemn that? Sometimes we do like to have something neatly-packed and delivered to us, so we can grab it easily and say, “Oh, this is wrong or right.” Nella really evades that neatness beautifully, I think.

What was it like to explore these ideas, not only with Tessa Thompson, but also with Rebecca, who herself isn’t Black, she’s white, but she has a mixed race, Black grandfather? You’re not American, but you have an experience of race that is particular to where you’re from. So what was it like to share these very differing experiences and figure it out together?

I mean, it was really freeing. We didn’t actually have any rehearsal time because we had no money. But we did have countless conversations, and I found it such a safe space to talk about race, class, gender—all of the myriad ideas and themes in Nella’s book— really honestly. I think, when it comes to important themes that are hot points now, people are very frightened about saying the wrong thing. And they’re frightened maybe of their own belief systems, that it might not fit in with the current narrative. And, usually, that’s what happens, is that, political correctness gets the blame. I’m always a bit weary of that, because I’m thinking… God, that’s a whole other subject. I don’t know who invented political correctness, but all it is, for me anyways, it’s like, “Don’t be dick, don’t be offensive.” Right? And now, it’s used as this evil… I don’t know.

Like censoring.

It’s a censorious force, that is curtailing people’s freedom and I’m thinking, “Oh my God. That’s a cop-out.” But I do understand that people need spaces to explore where they are in terms of their beliefs, so they can speak freely, and maybe change perspective, maybe listen to one another. I just feel that this space is a space where I felt I could do that because in Nella’s book, she places us in a dilemma sometimes, because for example, Rene’s an upstanding citizen of her community, she’s a great mother, a great wife, and she’s intelligent. It’s all about uplifting the race, and these are all great qualities.

But on further interrogation, Nella is saying, I feel, that we also have to allow ourselves to interrogate where that can be fallible, where the demands in ourselves, and what we believe in, can be restrictive to ourselves. In fulfilling all these roles and these duties, which are great, she’s somehow sacrificing her own identity, her own desire, her own impulses. And, should that be the case? For me, I kept going back to Black women sacrificing a lot for the cause, for the world, fulfilling a role for everybody else and not having enough space and time to fulfill the role for themselves. With Clare, we have the embodiment of someone who does that entirely. She swings the other way. I mean, by her own admittance, she will trample on anyone to get what she wants. So, there’s a cost to living in these binaries for both women, and it’s not what you expect.

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