{"id":206439,"date":"2025-12-23T07:10:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T07:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/206439\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T07:10:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T07:10:17","slug":"jessie-buckley-on-hamnet-working-with-paul-mescal-and-her-first-christmas-as-a-mum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/206439\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessie Buckley on Hamnet, working with Paul Mescal, and her first Christmas as a mum"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is set to be Christmas on the double for Jessie Buckley as she looks forward to celebrating the season with loved ones. After all, she\u2019s marking a very special festive season \u2014 the first since her baby daughter arrived into the world five months ago.<\/p>\n

This weekend, the Killarney actress is heading for her rural home in Norfolk to mark the end of what has been an extraordinary year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll my husband\u2019s family are coming for a pre-Christmas. We\u2019re going to cook one Christmas dinner, and then all my family are coming over for Christmas to us \u2014 it\u2019s my little girl\u2019s first Christmas,\u201d she says, adding that she still has lots to organise.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy husband\u2019s put the Christmas tree up at home. Everyone will muck in, we\u2019ll all cook together. We\u2019ll light a fire. We\u2019ll go for a walk, do very, very simple things \u2014 wear tracksuit pants with holes in them and no makeup.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buckley is greatly looking forward to the downtime following the release of what\u2019s becoming her most celebrated film in a stellar career. Starring alongside her compatriot Paul Mescal in Hamnet, she is the heart and soul of an intimate and emotional drama, told largely through the perspective of her character.<\/p>\n

\"JessieJessie Buckley in Hamnet <\/p>\n

\n Hamnet is adapted from the novel by Irish author Maggie O\u2019Farrell, who co-wrote the screenplay with its Oscar-winning director, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao ( Nomadland). It tells the moving story of love and loss that inspired the creation of William Shakespeare\u2019s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mescal plays the celebrated bard, who falls in love and starts a family with Buckley\u2019s Agnes. Their children include Hamnet, who would later be remembered in the Shakespearian tragedy. Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, interchangeable in Stratford records in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.<\/p>\n

When we meet just hours before the premiere of the film in Dublin, she is side by side with Zhao and it\u2019s evident they\u2019re both excited at the prospect of
showing it to Irish audiences for the first time. Buckley and Mescal have, just days earlier, received Golden Globe Award nominations in what looks set to be a busy awards season for both of them.<\/p>\n

Buckley first read O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel after learning that Zhao wanted her to star in the film. \u201cI\u2019d read I am, I am, I am by Maggie before,\u201d she says. \u201cI actually read it in a book club, and I found the pressure of the book club too intense. They\u2019re not for me, book clubs \u2014 I don\u2019t like being told what I\u2019m meant to be doing,\u201d she smiles. She remembers finding Hamnet \u201cintoxicating\u201d when she read it in one sitting throughout the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s such an extraordinary writer \u2014 she\u2019s a poet, she\u2019s an editor, she\u2019s an excavator. She\u2019s also reframing stories that have been mistold. How she writes is very primal, and there\u2019s so much shadow and complexity and truth and dynamics. It\u2019s not just the genius and his wife. It\u2019s about a marriage, about desire. About ambition and creativity and love and loss and parenthood and being able to love with all the capacity that they hold inside themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MaggieMaggie O\u2019Farrell, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal and Chlo\u00e9 Zhao at the Irish premiere of Hamnet. Picture: Andres Poveda<\/p>\n

Zhao\u2019s film brings out the very best in Buckley and Mescal, who are sublime together, delivering empathetic work in a tale of love, loss, and the human experience. The final half hour, in particular, where Agnes watches the play for the first time at the Globe Theatre, will be remembered for years to come. Buckley is moved that the film is resonating so strongly with audiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m incredibly proud of this film, and I\u2019m so proud that it\u2019s being responded to the way it is, and that it is being recognised. The personal effect and having to actually contain that for people \u2014 that\u2019s it for me. That for me is the greatest feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with Mescal on the film, she says, has been \u201can incredibly significant collaboration\u201d in her life. \u201cI think he has been such a solid container and team collaborator with me, somebody that I was meeting in absolute equality, and there was so much care, trust, which allowed danger. Potential to fall off the edge of the cliff, to be in an absolute unknowable together.\u201d Mescal is on a short trip home for the Irish premiere from London, where he is playing Paul McCartney in Sam Mendes\u2019 four interconnected films about The Beatles.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing from playing a gladiator to William Shakespeare to The Beatles \u2014 that takes a very special man and human to be able to fill those spaces, because these are people,\u201d says Buckley.<\/p>\n

\"JessieJessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in a scene from \u2018Hamnet\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not just on a pedestal \u2014 Paul McCartney has touched a million people with his stories. Shakespeare has touched people throughout his lifetime and past his lifetime, forever, and that takes a very special heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just is a movie star, and I mean that with the most admiration and love \u2014 the coat just fits him. It\u2019s no mean feat to be able to inhabit that space as a giant and also have the heart of a human \u2014 that is as full \u2014 inside that space too.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of just three women \u2014 and the first woman of colour \u2014 to win a Best Director Oscar (for Nomadland), Chlo\u00e9 Zhao has cast wisely in her two leads, and wanted Buckley and Mescal to be part of Hamnet from the very early stages. Teaming with an Irish writer, it is notable, too, that several Irish actors \u2014 including David Wilmot, Justine Mitchell, and Derry Girls star Louisa Harland \u2014 all appear in key supporting roles.<\/p>\n

Zhao says she has long felt a connection to this country and its people \u2014 with Buckley quipping to the filmmaker: \u201cGet that Irish air into your lungs,\u201d as they start their interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a shamanic teacher \u2014 she\u2019s Irish, and I\u2019ve worked with her for over 17 years now,\u201d says Zhao. \u201cI\u2019ve been celebrating the Wheel of the Year, Celtic holidays more than the agrarian holidays. I always felt very close to this culture. And partially, I think it\u2019s because the Roman Empire never got really far enough, and there\u2019s still something very old preserved in the water, in the land, and the people who are up here still have that connection in their DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JessieJessie Buckley in The Lost Daughter<\/p>\n

She felt she had found her Agnes, says Zhao, when she watched the Killarney actress in her Oscar-nominated role in Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s directorial feature debut, The Lost Daughter. Buckley and Gyllenhaal will reunite for next spring\u2019s The Bride, about the Bride of Frankenstein.<\/p>\n

Zhao says in The Lost Daughter she saw a rare quality in Buckley\u2019s portrayal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a super power, a sometimes unfortunate power, which is I can see through these people\u2019s eyes, whether they\u2019re there or not, whether they\u2019re truly open.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can see her through the screen. That\u2019s very rare, because that\u2019s a choice, whether that person has got big enough a heart to allow the world in. They\u2019re not afraid of their own depth.<\/p>\n

\u201cJessie has that kind of primal, old power behind her, whether she knows or not. It\u2019s there holding her so then she feels strong enough to let the windows of her soul open to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JessieJessie Buckley in Hamnet <\/p>\n

Buckley\u2019s creativity was first fostered at her family home near Killarney\u2019s Mangerton Mountain, where dad Tim loved writing poetry and telling stories. Her mother Marina Cassidy \u2014 a harpist, vocalist, and music therapist \u2014 was an early inspiration. Buckley joined Killarney Musical Society and was aged just 18 when she finished as runner up in I\u2019d Do Anything, a reality-TV show contest to find Nancy for a West End production of Oliver!\n <\/p>\n

A stage career followed but the actress was also getting cast for TV and film roles, appearing opposite Tom Hardy in Taboo and Johnny Flynn in Beast.<\/p>\n

Her role as a working-class Glaswegian with a dream of going to Nashville in the delightful Wild Rose showed her musical as well as acting talents. In 2022, she recorded an album \u2014 For All the Days That Tear the Heart \u2014 with Bernard Butler.<\/p>\n

Other roles have included Charlie Kaufman\u2019s I\u2019m Thinking of Ending Things and last year\u2019s comedy-drama Wicked Little Letters.<\/p>\n

Her achievements have made her one of our best-known international talents \u2014 but bringing a project home to Ireland is always a special experience, she says, hours before she is warmly welcomed at\u00a0 Hamnet\u2019s Irish premiere.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny time I touch down it\u2019s like the smell of Ireland that makes me go: \u2018Oh God, yeah, I\u2019m home\u2019,\u201d she says. \u201cThe warmth of people \u2014 I think we want to feel each other in Ireland. I think we really demand connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamnet is in Irish cinemas from January 9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is set to be Christmas on the double for Jessie Buckley as she looks forward to celebrating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,6405],"class_list":["post-206439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music-movies-reviews-munster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}