Using black and white also allowed Hall to cast Black actresses in the roles. She’s not trying to “fool” anyone into thinking that Negga or Thompson is white, she’s simply trying to turn the film’s deeply metaphorical ideas into a practical experience.

Using black and white [media] also allowed [Rebecca] Hall to cast Black actresses in the roles. She’s not trying to “fool” anyone into thinking that Negga or Thompson is white, she’s simply trying to turn the film’s deeply metaphorical ideas into a practical experience. The audience will have “very fixed ideas about Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga’s racial identity,” Hall said, “which gives me a position from which to destabilize those ideas and point out the limits of just reducing them to that one definition.”

Kate Erbland, “‘Passing’: Rebecca Hall Made One of the Year’s Best Debuts, but for Years Nobody Would Fund It,” IndieWire, October 28, 2021. https://www.indiewire.com/2021/10/passing-rebecca-hall-interview-1234674475/.

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