Interview: How Chloé Zhao and Jessie Buckley Gave Life and Agency to ‘Hamnet’ and Agnes
It’s been a strange road for Chloé Zhao. An early indie darling with early features like Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider, using non-actors to give the films a raw and natural feel. She kept that feel but upped the star factor when Nomadland came to her doorstep, bringing in two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand to lead the non-fiction based story of a woman on the fringes, by choice, living in a van as she roams the American West. Coming in the weirdness of the COVID era in 2020, the film became a major critics darling, scooping up festival prizes, including the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award, to become an unexpected sweeper of the season. BAFTA, Gotham, Spirit Awards, Golden Globes all anointed Zhao and the film on its way to becoming the Oscar winner for Best Picture, Best Director–making her only the second woman ever at the time–and grabbing a third Best Actress win for McDormand in the process.
But as often happens, Hollywood took notice of Zhao in a way they hadn’t before and offered her a Marvel movie, thrusting her into the world of huge budgets and studio notes. The arduous road to and from 2021’s Eternals, had some of the director’s flair but was largely dismissed as mid-tier MCU and coming at a point of superhero overload to become one of the first significant box office failures in the popular genre. All of this had an impact on Zhao that turned her inward and away from filmmaking. An outspoken neurodivergent person, the struggle to understand came at a price. “I’ve always [been] quite confused why I don’t fit in, or why certain things are so easy for other people but so hard for me,” she said recently in London at a BFI screening.
The path to returning from the pain of that process (“I’ve been through the fire — a very painful fire — and I think there is probably a bit of fear around that,” she told the LA Times at the Telluride Film Festival), turning down Steven Spielberg, who asked her to make Hamnet, adapted from the historical fiction novel by Maggie O’Farrell about the death of William Shakespeare’s only son, and also giving agency to Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, who historically has often been unreasonably villainized. Oscar winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty, 1917) was originally set to direct but dropped out but remained on as a producer (along with Steven Spielberg). Then it was a meeting with Paul Mescal. Then with Jessie Buckley. Then Zhao knew she could do it, and wanted to.
Jessie Buckley’s path to here has a more contemporary mark. At 17, she starred in a UK reality talent show in hopes of catching a big break. She didn’t win but what she learned from that experience was a lifetime’s journey. From there, she dove into theater (playing Miranda in Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Globe, no less) and television (Shakespeare again, this time Romeo and Juliet with Josh O’Connor) and film, earning a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, which she co-starred with her Hamnet husband Paul Mescal, but shared no scenes. Coming into Hamnet, like many of us, Shakespeare was an integral part of our academic lives but so little is actually known about him, even less so the life of his wife Agnes, more commonly known as Anne Hathaway. This lack of historical text (what there is of her is quite negative) offered Buckley more freedom of expression, an interpretation rather than an impression.
I talked to Zhao and Buckley in early October, just weeks after Hamnet had won the TIFF People’s Choice Award, making Zhao the only director ever to helm two winners there. Since then the film has won several more audience awards (including London, Middleburg and Mill Valley) ahead of its theatrical debut later this month. At the Telluride Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere, Zhao took the audience through an emotional meditation process before the film, much to everyone’s surprise and wonder. It was part of her own emotional journey and but once we saw the film, also provided a greater context. Ready for the emotional roller coaster I knew the book to be, this unexpected precursor set the stage for more than an exploration of grief but one of reconciliation, self-discovery and love.
Erik Anderson: I am so thrilled to talk to you both. I saw this at Telluride, and I don’t say it lightly, that it moved me to a degree that I wasn’t even really prepared for. Even after reading the book. Something changed in me.
Jessie Buckley: Oh, what changed?
Erik Anderson: You know, it actually started with the meditation, because I wasn’t prepared for that. And it’s not something that you see in a festival environment, which usually feels rushed. And you feel like, “All right, I’m going to watch this, and then I have to look at my watch and figure out the next thing that I’m going to do.” But I felt centered. And actually, I specifically wanted to ask you about that, and what that meditation meant to you, and for the audience that gets to participate in it.
Chloé Zhao: I think I was going through, I’ve done a lot of somatic healing the last four years, and then, because I think maybe all three of us can relate, that it wasn’t safe growing up. And then, skipping to the head, got really interested in storytelling. And then, you can’t go halfway through life, it just catches up with you, right? It really catches up with you, and you realize, “Do something about it, or you die. You are not going to make it.” So going into the body is the only way, it’s extremely painful, but I had to do it. And then, this lady here can sniff out when people are in trouble, as she knows. And then, it’s weird, she would message me when I’m having dark nights. So I always end up on her couch, in her bathtub.
And then she shared with me a tool, which is Dreamwork, that saved my life, changed my life, that I’m still expanding and training right now with our facilitator. So knowing how much that changed my life, and knowing how much that helped my actors on set, we want to continue sharing that beautiful experience we experienced. Not just the product and what it comes with for us, but that was a gift that we had the responsibilities through this process to share with the audience. So it was scary, because you never know how people’s going to react, but you know it feels so essential. So you have to just have the courage to go do it. And those who enjoy it, hopefully, it is helpful.
EA: The participation of it just was, I think people were unprepared, in the best way possible.
JB: Well, it’s also crazy how scary it is, something like that has become before you do it, because you become so detached in some ways. And like you said, we’re all just running around and, yeah.
EA: It made people very vulnerable in front of a lot of strangers. And I think it, I mean, when I looked to my left and my right at the people with me. It was smiles and tears. So it was very successful.
CZ: And all we’re doing is asking people to take three breaths, and touch their heart. And that’s so, do you know what I mean? How much we’re deprived of that thing that is free, is easy. And there’s a reason why they don’t teach us that.
EA: Yeah.
JB: Yeah.
EA: Very much so. Chloé, when I read the book, I kept thinking, “How is somebody going to adapt this? The prose is so heavy.”
CZ: You read it before the film?
EA: Absolutely. And I loved it. The prose is heavy, there’s little dialogue, and the adaptation of it felt just impossible. Obviously, having Maggie as a co-writer, seems like the only way this ever could have worked. Can you just talk about changing the book language to cinematic language, and just really how different those two are?
CZ: I actually think having very little dialogue and being poetic, to me, that’s the cinematic language. And that’s the one that I’m okay with. And knowing that would then give space for the magic, once other people get involved, that I need. Because sometimes if it’s too literal, it’s going to get stuck. And then, I just told Maggie, “If you don’t do it… I’m not going to go call somebody else.” She said, “Really?” I went, “Yes.” She’s like, “Oh my God, so I don’t have a choice, if I won’t you…” I’m like, “Yeah.” Also, both of our favorite filmmaker is Wong Kar-wai, which is crazy. I said, “You know who that is?” Maggie goes, “Are you kidding me?” Because touching, just all these nonverbal language in Wong Kar-wai’s films, it’s filmed. And the way he edited this film, you can feel almost like the way she writes the prose, I would say, it’s almost like it’s been edited, image after image.
EA: I love that. Jessie, what was your knowledge and understanding of Agnes/Anne Hathaway, and how she’s been presented culturally? And what about this version appealed to you?
JB: I had no knowledge of her. I don’t think anybody did. I mean, I’ve been thinking a lot, and these kinds of gigantic figures like Shakespeare and Frankenstein. These kinds of giants. And actually there’s never been any attention to the feminine behind these giants. And actually, a lot of these giants, or… Yeah, they were there, because it’s there in the stories that they tell, and the stories that are told of them, and what they long for.
So I didn’t have any, I mean obviously, I knew she had children. But I didn’t have any… Nobody knew, apart from actually, there were kind of misguided historical accounts that blemish these women as somebody who restrained the great man from his work. But you then look at his great work and you go, “But he couldn’t have created Lady Macbeth or Juliet, or the complex humanity that all of his women contained, without knowing women like that in his life. And so, when I read the book, actually before that, I was looking back at stuff that I’d done in prep. And Fran McDormand had given me this book called “Cassandra Speaks,” and it was actually the beginning of entering, and we spoke about this when we first met. It’s about reclaiming the stories that have been told about women, and if they had been told differently, how differently… I don’t know if you’ve read that book-
EA: Yeah. That makes such perfect sense.
JB: First of all, she’s just hungry. She’s hungry for knowledge. She was hungry for-
CZ: Experience.
JB: … experience. She was hungry-
CZ: Life.
JB: … for life. And in some way, that’s kind of changed the trajectory. So then Agnes arrived in my lap, having read that book, having met Chloé, and wanting to kind of, I guess, bring those… I mean, I always want to bring the bits of the woman that are under the earth to the surface, the complicated parts of what it is, to the surface. And let it be seen. And so when you, anyway, I’m talking way too much about this.
CZ: That’s her thing.
EA: No, I love that, and I love that it was Frances McDormand that did that.
Chloé: Fran loves her.
EA: I see a lot of you in her, in style.
JB: I’m delighted.
CZ: It’s a compliment.
JB: Huge compliment.
EA: In just the journeywoman’s style, and approach, to performance. You vibe.
CZ: The two of them, the thing they have most in common, for someone who has spent time with both of them in various settings, both emotional and physical, is that presence. They’re not afraid to be present at all times. And that is hard. They’re not afraid to be in those breadths. It’s not easy.
EA: This is going to be funny, at least I hope it is. You and I have something in common. So you were a part-
JB: Apart from the varnish? [our fingernails are painted the same dark color]
EA: [looking at our nails] That’s actually really close.
CZ: I was just thinking about that. I love it.
EA: So you were a part of the reality show I’d Do Anything in hopes of landing the role of Nancy in a West End production of Oliver.
JB: Yeah.
EA: In sixth grade, I auditioned for the role of Nancy, in our school’s version of the musical.
JB: Did you do better than me?
EA: I also got second place.
JB: Second’s the best. Look at us now.
EA: That’s literally what I… look [I show her my notes where it says ‘look at us now’].
JB: Praise thy name.
EA: Exactly. Yes. It was a very progressive school for the time.
JB: Yeah.
CZ: I need to have this footage.
EA: [to Chloé] Oh, gosh, if only. [to Jessie] What did that experience do for you, to help you navigate this industry, and know kind of what you wanted and what you didn’t want?
JB: I mean, look, I was a tiny tot. I was 17. I look back, I’ve had different times of looking back at that moment in my life. I’ve had shame, looking back at that moment of my life, because reality shows are kind of, they’re their own thing. But I look back now with so much astonishment and pride in that little woman, who had so much courage and so much real passion, and was figuring it out. And was actually trying to feel. That’s what I was doing then, was trying to do, which I still do now. And those early moments are so significant, because you’re touching the void in the most primal and terrifying way, because the potential to fail is absolute, like it’s life and death. It feels like life and death. And actually that little girl was doing it in front of a whole world.
EA: Exactly.
JB: And all I wanted was to be part of this community, which I’ve ended up being part of, and it was the beginning of an education. And I think, with regards to the industry, I was totally ignorant of even what an industry was, and I couldn’t believe I was being allowed to be there. And yeah, you’re telling stories. I think-
CZ: Did you backstab anyone?
JB: No. [laughs]
CZ: Did anybody back stab you?
EA: Oh my gosh. [laughs]
Jessie: Maybe. I don’t know… that’s the weird thing about reality shows, and also the industry is, they try… There’s a feeding part of it where they’re like, they interview you and so they say, “And do you think that you are better than the other girls?”
CZ: Oh, shit.
JB: And you’re like, “No, I don’t think so.” And they’re like, “Well, you should…” But most of, sorry. I would say there’s one thing that, I’m Irish, so be careful of what you ask because I can talk.
The part, actually that also I had forgotten about, but I was very young. And totally like Bambi on ice in my body, in finding myself. And in the show there was a part that they took me to do an exercise to, probably to like femininity school. Because I was incredibly awkward, I was finding my body, and it was quite shaming. But I think I took it to heart then, and nowadays, I feel very different about being in the body that you’re in. Like, how beautiful.
EA: I love that.
Jessie: It’s just where you are.
CZ: I’m going to take a look at that as soon as I get home.
EA: Chloé, with so many pieces of Shakespeare dialogue, and the whole section of Hamlet itself that’s in the film, how did you want to present it in a way that we haven’t seen before? Because I have to say, I will never, ever hear the “to be or not to be” speech without this context. I get emotional just thinking about it.
JB: It’s amazing.
CZ: You get emotions thinking about it because you, and unfortunately for you, know what that tension is like. I can tell. And from that unbearable lightness of being, that impulse for… You know, “To live and not to…” It’s fucking hard. Life is hard. So I think you probably always loved that speech, and this one now is being, I think that speech has some kind of attitude. I think so.
JB: Yeah. It’s the perfect contradiction-
CZ: Yeah, it sums up the greatest-
JB: … of humanity.
CZ: … human dilemma. It’s so hard. But that’s what makes us complex and interesting. And I just leave it to the actors. I don’t know if she’s here.
EA: Speaking of that, too. Jessie and Paul have such a rich chemistry, that’s part dueling, and part synergistic.
CZ: Ooh, better words.
EA: Is that how you landed on them for this? What was that journey for you?
CZ: I knew I had to lock Agnes in first. I read the book, and I just called Jessie Buckley’s agent. Right away. I can’t think of anybody else. So then, luckily, she said yes. And then, I needed to make sure I chemistry tested Paul and her, because if there’s no chemistry there… She thought he was attractive, so.
JB: Huh?
CZ: You thought he was attractive, acceptable.
JB: I mean, it’s not a hardship to play off. [laughs].
CZ: I remember getting pushback on things that weren’t historically accurate. Like Paul’s hair, but we’ve seen the historically accurate version and I said “No. I want Shakespeare to look sexy. I want a hot Shakespeare.”
[EA and JB laugh]
CZ: So he was acceptable in that sense. [laughs]
EA: The Irish firecracker of the both of you.
CZ: Oh, yeah. They’re both Irish. And he was doing Streetcar. So he came in-
JB: And training for Gladiator, as well.
CZ: And training for Gladiator, yeah. And then, so the two of them… And he was in a mull, mull-
JB: A mullet.
CZ: … a mullet. He’s wearing a little, well, we call it wife beaters in America. And then he came into a very small room. It was a tiny room, remember?
JB: Yeah.
CZ: And then at some point he grabbed her, slammed her against the wall. And she’s like, “Ah,” and then they, yeah. And then I thought-
JB: I didn’t expect, I think the thing that, what the crackle in this chemistry is, is that there is a huge amount of trust.
CZ: Right away, huh?
Jessie: There really was, there’s so much of Paul that I didn’t know, and I think there was so much of each other that we didn’t know. Because we knew each other as friends, and knew each other’s work, and had a lot of love and respect for that. But there was always potential. And it was very, there was a flow. And from the get-go, we were like, “Let’s just go,” “And I’ve got you.”
CZ: They went for it. And also, I met Paul, I think it was six hours before I met Jessie for the first time at Telluride. And I can tell, there was something simmering underneath that is, there’s a lot, a lot. And then it’s just like… And that kind of depth is what we need for Shakespeare, and also, you need that. The two of you both have that. And it’s not just up here, down here, it’s going at the same time. And that’s necessary.
EA: Yes.
CZ: That’s why they discover each other, layers and layers and layers, as they go through it.
EA: Jessie, there’s almost something Christ-like to this story, and I say this as a largely non-religious person, but-
CZ: I love that. That’s the greatest compliment we ever got.
EA: Agnes essentially gives her only son to the world. Her loss is now our shared experience, in a way that nobody really even properly knows about. And I want to be very thoughtful about how I ask this. From the time that you filmed, to now becoming a mother yourself, have those two experiences shaped the way you think and feel about each of them?
JB: Jesus.
EA: Sorry.
JB: Good question. When I came into Hamnet, I had a broken heart.
CZ: [to Jessie] I’m so glad you said it out loud. [to me] You’re the first one, exclusive.
JB: I was really quite scared, because I recognized immediately that this was exactly the place that I was meant to enter into this world for. And at the same time, I had the deep personal hunger to want to become a mother. And I hadn’t, yet. And these two kinds of wounds were running alongside each other. And what Chloé, I think… And actually, with the broken heart and with this mother thing, I recognized that there was a love that was bigger than that feeling or that moment. There was something bigger. There’s something bigger than both of us, or that thought. And I think learning to love, and tenderize myself to the depths of love, in this was also learning to let go. And that actually, in order to be that amount of love, was to be able to let go. And in the most extraordinary, like a week after I finished filming, I became pregnant.
CZ: Because last week we coined the phrase “tender forward.”
JB: Tender forward. I don’t know if that answers your question.
EA: Beautifully, yes.
JB: I think that’s so beautiful, that’s why Hamlet exists in the capacity that it does, is he’s a great… I mean, he’s complicated, but he is grief. He is love. He is grief. And he is that, and I mean, he loves. His love is violent. The love that he’s lost has been born out of violence. The grief that he feels is because of the love so deep. And I think what Hamlet offers us is the channel to grieve, in some way, and to love.
EA: I think that’s exactly what happens.
CZ: Yeah.
JB: Yeah.
CZ: And then, you should tell him about the first time Baby saw the movie.
JB: Oh. Well the-
CZ: You just slept in it, yeah.
JB: Yeah, the first time I saw it, I was eight months pregnant.
CZ: And the baby’s first movie, she helped the baby watch it again. Baby sat through the whole thing.
JB: She slept.
CZ: That’s how sleepy the film could be, right? My films, in general. Babies sleep well. [laughs]
JB: I know, right? [laughs]
EA: [laughs]
CZ: It’s Max’s fault. [composer Max Richter]
EA: I definitely want to talk about the obviously integral casting of Hamnet himself. And just the genius of Jacobi Jupe. And I know he’s in a family of actors, but what was the casting process like? Because that’s also a bit of a chemistry read as well, I imagine.
CZ: Well, the process was to see how present he can be, at all times. So I was saying some mean things to him, and then see how he reacts. And with the parents, and his-
JB: Having his E.T. audition. [laughs]
CZ: Yeah, basically.
EA: Oh my God.
CZ: Basically. “Take everything you love away.” But then, no. I mean, it made him cry. But then he came over, after that, in between things. He said, “Hey, Chloé.” I’m like, “Yeah?” He’s like, “I heard that you had COVID. Are you okay now?” I was like, “Yes.” And he’s like, “Yeah, because COVID, it takes a long time to get better.” And I was like, “You’re hired.” Because Hamnet is like that, you know? Hamnet over… He feels that the world is on his shoulders, his father is not there, right? And you really feel that way.
And then I think the first audition was with him and Paul, because you weren’t doing that.
JB: I wasn’t there.
CZ: Yeah, and so actually in the middle of that audition, Paul, to mess with Jacobi, he picked him up and said, “Will you be brave?” And that made it into the script. So they’re kindred spirits. And then we did the family, together. Once everybody arrived. In peace. Why not?
JB: Why not.
EA: Yeah, that kid is one of a kind.
JB: He’s an amazing little kid. He’s so sweet.
EA: Thank you both, so much. I’m just really honored to be able to talk to you about this film.
Jessie: Thank you.
CZ: Thank you, Erik.
EA: I appreciate your time.
Jessie: Likewise. Thank you.
Focus Features will release Hamnet in New York and Los Angeles on November 26 and expand wide on December 5.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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