‘Passing’ as white: How making new film helped explain Rebecca Hall’s family history
Rebecca Hall was in her mid-20s when she first started to understand her complicated family history. The British actress-turned-director says most would look at her fair complexion and dark hair and see “English rose”, she says – but looks are never the end of a person’s story.
Hall, who has appeared in films including Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Frost/Nixon and Holmes & Watson, is the daughter of the late renowned British film and theatre director Peter Hall and the American opera singer Maria Ewing.
Her maternal grandfather, she learned, was a light-skinned black man who “passed” for white for the majority of his life.
Tessa Thompson (left) and Ruth Negga star in Rebecca Hall’s Passing. Pic: Netflix
It was about 13 years ago, when Hall picked up the 1929 novel Passing, by Nella Larsen, that she started to consider her own mixed-race heritage and why it had never really been spoken about in her family.
Set in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York, Larsen’s exploration of race and the practice of “passing”, which was not uncommon for light-skinned black people wanting to escape racial segregation and discrimination in that era, struck a nerve.
Hall pictured with Negga (left) and Tessa Thompson (right) at a screening of the film in New York earlier this year, and below with her mother, Maria Ewing, in 2010. Pics: Andy Kropa/Invision/AP and Alex Berliner/BEI/Shutterstock
Finding out about her own history led to Hall adapting the novel for the big screen; the story follows two black women, Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) and Clare Kendry (Oscar nominee Ruth Negga), who could both “pass” as white but choose to live on opposite sides of the colour line.
“I think so many people are not aware that it happened because it’s a historical event that was necessarily hidden,” Hall tells Sky News.
“So a lot of families, it’s hidden even within those families, including my own. My grandfather was African-American and he passed white for most of his life. And that is a fact that I’ve only really fully learned details of in the last year or so.”
Before she read Larsen’s novel, Hall says she had no context or even any way of describing how her grandfather had lived his life, and why. “So it gave me an enormous amount of context and understanding and compassion and empathy for the choice.”
Passing tells the story of former childhood friends Clare and Irene, who are reunited one summer and Irene discovers Clare has been passing as white; she is even married to an overt racist (played by Alexander Skarsgård).
The film uses the notion of passing to explore not just racial identity but gender and the responsibilities of motherhood, sexuality and the performance of femininity.
Hall on set with Thompson and Negga, and below with Andre Holland, who plays Irene’s husband Brian. Pics: Emily V Aragones/ Netflix
It is not about critiquing those who chose to pass, says Hall, but about critiquing “a society that, in any way, judges a person’s construct of themselves… there’s the things we think we believe, the person we think we ought to be, that society wants us to be. And there’s the thing we really want to be, that we desire to be. And sometimes that can be a huge conflict zone, and it means sometimes that we’re hiding our true selves.”
Passing is Hall’s directorial debut and it has been many years in the making. “I faced problems both within the industry – I came up against blocks trying to get it made – but I also came up against personal blocks,” she says.
“[The screenplay] sat in a drawer for quite a long time because I just didn’t have the confidence. I felt like it was too ambitious… and I just didn’t believe anyone would let me make it.”
Hall feared that some in the industry would question her suitability for telling this story.
“The pitch meetings were particularly poignant,” she says. “I ended up getting very emotional every time I was pitching it to some financier because they would invariably ask me, you know, ‘why on earth are you making this?’
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“But I feel like I’m this sort of walking example of what this film’s all about. You know, everyone looks at me and has a whole set of assumptions that aren’t necessarily true. Or they’re true but it’s not the end of the story.
“Forever, everyone’s looked at me and known that I’m Peter Hall’s daughter and I’m part of a British theatrical lineage, and [I’m thought of as] ‘English rose’, and that’s sort of the end of the story. And the fact that within my own story there’s… so many other contradictory and elusive things sort of points out the absurdity of it all.”
Hall has shot the film in black and white, something she would not budge on. “In a very soundbitey kind of way, it just felt like the best way to make a movie about colourism was to take all the colour out of it,” she says.
“But I think more specifically what I mean by that is, I think sometimes to understand truths about humanity, we need poetry. We don’t necessarily need complete reality, sometimes the abstraction helps.
Negga as Clare and Thompson as Irene in Passing. Pic: Netflix
Alexander Skarsgard plays Clare’s racist husband John. Pic: Netflix
“I think black and white takes these concepts and sort of highlights that we’re so busy putting everyone into these categories, when no one can be reduced to a single thing. Like, you” – she gestures to me – “can’t be reduced to just ‘woman’ or, you know, ‘white’, or whatever it is… the great irony about black and white film is it’s not black and white, it’s grey. And this is existing in the grey areas, actually.”
Making the film opened up a lot of conversations between Hall and her mother that had previously been left unsaid.
“She’s extremely proud and she’s extremely emotional about it,” says Hall. “She said that she felt it had given her and her father who’s no longer with us a sort of release in a way, like an ability to talk about something that up until this point felt like it couldn’t be addressed.”
She adds: “I hope, sort of in the broadest sense, the thing that people take away [from the film] is, thinking about what the legacy of a life lived in hiding is. And that doesn’t just mean racial hiding, it means all the ways in which we’re not showing up for ourselves completely. And how we can’t because of how much society imposes something – especially black women.”
Passing is out now on Netflix
Despite The Who’s Quadrophenia being set over 60 years ago, Pete Townshend’s themes of identity, mental health, and modern masculinity are just as relevant today.
The album is having a renaissance as Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia A Mod ballet is being brought to life via dance at Sadler’s Wells East, and Sky News has an exclusive first look.
As Townshend puts it, the album he wrote is “perfect” for the stage.
Pete Townshend
“My wife Rachel did the orchestration for me, and as soon as I heard it I said to her it would make a fabulous ballet and we never really let that go,” he tells Sky News.
“Heavy percussion, concussive sequences. They’re explosive moments. They’re also romantic movement moments.”
If you identify with the demographics of Millennial, Gen Y or Gen Z, you might not be familiar with The Who and Mod culture.
But in post-war Britain the Mods were a cultural phenomenon characterised by fashion, music, and of course, scooters. The young rebels were seen as a counter-culture to the establishment and The Who, with Roger Daltry’s lead vocals and Pete Townshend’s writing, were the soundtrack.
Quadrophenia the album is widely regarded as an essay on the British adolescent experience at the time, focusing on the life of fictional protagonist Jimmy – a young Mod struggling with his sanity, self-doubt, and alienation.
Townshend sets the rock opera in 1965 but thinks its themes of identity, mental health, and modern masculinity are just as relevant today.
He says: “The phobias and the restrictions and the unwritten laws about how young men should behave. The ground that they broke, that we broke because I was a part of it.
“Men were letting go of [the] wartime-related, uniform-related stance that if I wear this kind of outfit it makes me look like a man.”
Paris Fitzpatrick and Pete Townshend. Pic: Johan Persson
This struggle of modern masculinity and identity appears to be echoing today as manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate, incel culture, and Netflix’s Adolescence make headlines.
For dancer Paris Fitzpatrick, who takes on the lead role of Jimmy, the story resonates.
Paris Fitzpatrick, who takes on the lead role of Jimmy in the ballet
“I think there’s a connection massively and I think there may even be a little more revival in some way,” he tells Sky News.
“I love that myself. I love non-conforming to gender norms and typical masculinity; I think it’s great to challenge things.”
Despite the album being written before he was born, the dancer says he was familiar with the genre already.
“I actually did an art GCSE project about Mods and rockers and Quadrophenia,” he says.
“I think we’ll be able to bring it to new audiences and hopefully, maybe people will be inspired to to learn more about their music and the whole cultural movement of the early 60s.”
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In 1979, the album was adapted into a film directed by Franc Roddam starring Ray Winstone and Sting but Townshend admits because the film missed key points he is “not a big fan”.
“What it turned out to be in the movie was a story about culture, about social scenario and less about really the specifics of mental illness and how that affects young people,” he adds, also complimenting Roddam’s writing for the film.
Perhaps a testament to Pete Townshend’s creativity, Quadrophenia started as an album, was successfully adapted to film and now it will hit the stage as a contemporary ballet.
It appears that over six decades later Mod culture is still cool and their issues still relatable.
Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet will tour to Plymouth Theatre Royal from 28 May to 1 June 2025, Edinburgh Festival Theatre from 10 to 14 June 2025 and the Mayflower, Southampton from 18 to 21 June 2025 before having its official opening at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London on 24 June running to 13 July 2025 and then visiting The Lowry, Salford from 15 to 19 July 2025.
Russell Brand has been charged with rape and two counts of sexual assault between 1999 and 2005.
The Metropolitan Police say the 50-year-old comedian, actor and author has also been charged with one count of oral rape and one count of indecent assault.
The charges relate to four women.
He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday 2 May.
Police have said Brand is accused of raping a woman in the Bournemouth area in 1999 and indecently assaulting a woman in the Westminster area of London in 2001.
He is also accused of orally raping and sexually assaulting a woman in Westminster in 2004.
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Ashna Hurynag discusses Russell Brand’s charges
The fourth charge alleges that a woman was sexually assaulted in Westminster between 2004 and 2005.
Police began investigating Brand, from Oxfordshire, in September 2023 after receiving a number of allegations.
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The comedian has denied the accusations and said he has “never engaged in non-consensual activity”.
He added in a video on X: “Of course, I am now going to have the opportunity to defend these charges in court, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”
Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy, who is leading the investigation, said: “The women who have made reports continue to receive support from specially trained officers.
“The Met’s investigation remains open and detectives ask anyone who has been affected by this case, or anyone who has any information, to come forward and speak with police.”
Tom Cruise has paid tribute to Val Kilmer, wishing his Top Gun co-star “well on the next journey”.
Cruise, speaking at the CinemaCon film event in Las Vegas on Thursday, asked for a moment’s silence to reflect on the “wonderful” times shared with the star, whom he called a “dear friend”.
Kilmer, who died of pneumonia on Tuesday aged 65, rocketed to fame starring alongside Cruise in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, playing Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, a rival fighter pilot to Cruise’s character Maverick.
Tom Cruise said ‘I wish you well on the next journey’. Pic: AP
Val Kilmer in 2017. Pic: AP
His last part was a cameo role in the 2022 blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick.
Cruise, on stage at Caesars Palace on Thursday, said: “I’d like to honour a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer. I can’t tell you how much I admire his work, how grateful and honoured I was when he joined Top Gun and came back later for Top Gun: Maverick.
“I think it would be really nice if we could have a moment together because he loved movies and he gave a lot to all of us. Just kind of think about all the wonderful times that we had with him.
“I wish you well on the next journey.”
The moment of silence followed a string of tributes from Hollywood figures including Cher, Francis Ford Coppola, Antonio Banderas and Michelle Monaghan.
Kilmer’s daughter Mercedes told the New York Times on Wednesday that the actor had died from pneumonia.
Tom Cruise at Caesars Palace on Thursday. Pic: AP
Diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, Kilmer discussed his illness and recovery in his 2020 memoir Your Huckleberry and Amazon Prime documentary Val.
He underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments for the disease and also had a tracheostomy which damaged his vocal cords and permanently gave him a raspy speaking voice.
Kilmer played Batman in the 1995 film Batman Forever and received critical acclaim for his portrayal of rock singer Jim Morrison in the 1991 movie The Doors.
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He also starred in True Romance and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as playing criminal Chris Shiherlis in Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Heat and Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone.
In 1988 he married British actress Joanne Whalley, whom he met while working on fantasy adventure Willow.
The couple had two children before divorcing in 1996.
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