Tessa Thompson Takes Her Time

Tessa Thompson has never been obsessed with chasing megastardom. But with her hands in multiple Hollywood franchises, a thriving production company, and a determination to make space for stories that aren't being told, she's achieving it-on her own terms.

- By Lauren Michele Jackson

Tessa Thompson cherishes a slow burn. "I know that a lot of my contemporaries don't agree with me, but I think being under lauded in your time sometimes is not a bad thing," she tells me. We're awaiting brunch in New York City at a favorite spot in SoHo, and here the actor, who stars this summer in the highly anticipated latest installments of two major franchises-Thor: Love and Thunder, from Marvel Studios, and HBO's Westworld, back for a fourth season-is only just ambiently referring to herself.

It is a Tuesday in early May and we're seated outdoors, graced by the kind of weather embraced by only the genuinely citified, with stark patches of shade too chilly for too-confident notions of springtime attire. But the sun feels delicious.

Thompson loves New York. She spent her childhood going back and forth between Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and her birthplace of Los Angeles. She comes back to the city often. "It suits my personality better than the isolation of Los Angeles," she says. "There's that kind of serendipity" about New York: You might run into a friend or catch a show. (Thompson, a professed "Pamela Anderson enthusiast," recently saw Chicago, with Anderson in the role of Roxie, as well as Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning A Strange Loop, which she calls "undeniably fantastic"; she also has plans to see the Deana Lawson show at MoMA PS1 with a friend, the musician Dev Hynes.)

Or you might clock the doppelgänger of a minor internet sensation from back when. "That guy looks so much like..." Thompson's eyes scan the restaurant, tracking left to right over my shoulder. "Remember Prison Bae? He looks a lot like him."

"Well, I think he has a modeling contract. Who knows?"

"Too bad we're not scouts."