{"id":193140,"date":"2025-12-20T08:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T08:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/193140\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T08:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T08:54:10","slug":"there-was-an-undeniable-energy-and-chemistry-between-us-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/193140\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018There was an undeniable energy and chemistry between us\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessie Buckley<\/a> tenses up just once during our interview. She has every right to do so. I feel bad mentioning it. But it\u2019s the elephant in the room.<\/p>\n

As we speak, she is the unbackable favourite to become the first Irish woman to win the Oscar<\/a> for best actress. Does she pretend it\u2019s not happening? Does she feel the pressure building?<\/p>\n

\u201cI … don\u2019t … know … how … to … answer … that … question,\u201d she says in a voice that suggests toothache has suddenly set in.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s understandable. Yet here we are. Some reckon the Norwegian actor Renate Reinsve could take it for Joachim Trier\u2019s Sentimental Value. Maybe Rose Byrne could sneak in for If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You.<\/p>\n

But, ever since a sensational premiere at Telluride Film Festival, in August, Buckley\u2019s turn as Agnes Shakespeare, wife of Paul Mescal<\/a>\u2019s William Shakespeare in Chlo\u00e9 Zhao<\/a>\u2019s Hamnet, has seemed the only serious contender.<\/p>\n

The character\u2019s grief at the death of her young son \u2013 after whom the film is named \u2013 is so emotionally abrasive that one almost feels embarrassed to share an auditorium with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how to answer that question,\u201d Buckley repeats. \u201cWhat I am proud of is that a woman like Agnes exists on screen. If someone was to ask a 15-year-old version of myself what I wish there was in the world, it would be that there was somebody like Agnes on screen. Someone who had that full and complex life force. Someone to reflect it was okay to live like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is, of course, impossibly vulgar to express admiration for a performance through the medium of the compromised sport that is Oscarball. Either side of that question, Buckley and Mescal do a good impression of seeming as if they actually enjoy the conversation. (Mind you, they are actors.)<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Jessie Buckley is unbeatable at the Oscars. Unless this happensOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

You could not hope for more helpful interviewees. Buckley, always at home to a diagonal smile and a Kerry-born cackle, leans into the question like a skier leaning into a bend. Mescal, a famously calm presence, allows the words to flow out in a gentle adagio.<\/p>\n

Who would not be relaxed in such a situation? Zhao\u2019s take on the much-loved novel<\/a> by Maggie O\u2019Farrell<\/a> has won the audience prize at virtually every festival it has played. Never mind the pointy-headed critics. The folk in the balcony love this delicate pastoral tragedy. <\/p>\n

\"Hamnet:Hamnet: Jacobi Jupe as the Shakespeares\u2019 son, with Bodhi Rae Breathnach and Olivia Lynes. Photograph: Agata Grzybowska\/Focus Features <\/p>\n

Yet, watching Agnes curl into despair following Hamnet\u2019s death from the plague, more than a few have worried whether Buckley was able to shake that grief off each evening.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love it,\u201d she says. \u201cEveryone\u2019s been, like, \u2018Are you seeing a therapist now?\u2019 Look, when you get to do work like this it\u2019s an absolute privilege and a pleasure. This is what we all dream of doing. Touching the void. Becoming more human. Telling stories in a potent and poetic way and making cinema. It\u2019s about making cinema that has a visceral effect on an audience. That\u2019s what storytelling is meant to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Hamnet:Hamnet: Chlo\u00e9 Zhao with Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley during filming. Photograph: Agata Grzybowska\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

Yet she seems to admit the part did hang around with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe weeks of Hamnet\u2019s death, I knew that it was going to be too much to have to come home,\u201d she says. \u201cI needed to stay close to set, to be in that mindset for myself \u2013 and, similarly, to be in the woods. I can\u2019t stay on the 10th floor of a hotel where there\u2019s cages outside my window. I need to be in nature. And so I found a little shepherd\u2019s spot in the middle of the forest.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Hamnet review: Five stars for Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal\u2019s devastating filmOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

We will come back to that. But let us now wrap ourselves in the Tricolour and consider these aristocrats of the Irish theatrical ascendancy. Buckley, an all-rounder of astonishing range, has been on the radar since coming second in I\u2019d Do Anything, the BBC<\/a>\u2019s talent show aimed at finding new leads for a West End Production of Oliver!, in 2008. <\/p>\n

Despite almost immediately securing a revival of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s A Little Night Music, the Killarney woman went off to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London. She was Marya in War & Peace for the BBC. She won a hatful of awards for her role as a wayward Scottish country singer in the film Wild Rose<\/a>, from 2018. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Lost Daughter: Jessie Buckley with Nikos Poursanidis and Ellie Mae Blake in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film <\/p>\n

By the time she secured her first Oscar nomination, for Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s film The Lost Daughter<\/a>, in 2022, her name was already whispered in awe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look back at that time and I think, How brave of that young girl,\u201d Buckley, who is about to turn 36, says of I\u2019d Do Anything. \u201cRight? I was 17, and all I had was raw passion. I still have raw passion, and that\u2019s all that matters in terms of the industry \u2013 your commitment and curiosity to tell stories as passionately and as humanely and as openheartedly as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t any training. I had no technique. I was so thrilled to be part of it. At that moment, music and singing felt like a vessel big enough for me to express the feelings inside me that felt like volcanoes. It wasn\u2019t really until I discovered Shakespeare<\/a> that I could consider myself an actor \u2013 because the words were so full.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone who hasn\u2019t seen her blistering rendition of As Long as He Needs Me on I\u2019d Do Anything needs to go back and check out the YouTube clip while muttering the words \u201cI had no technique\u201d to themselves. One can scarcely imagine how it would have sounded if she actually had that training.<\/p>\n

It was on The Lost Daughter that Mescal entered Buckley\u2019s story. Few actors have made such successful use of an unexpected breakthrough as he made of the pandemic furore around Normal People<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Raised in Co Kildare, Mescal was not exactly an unknown. Shortly after graduating from the Lir academy of dramatic art<\/a>, at Trinity College Dublin, he was cast as the lead in a popular production<\/a> of The Great Gatsby at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. But that TV adaptation of Sally Rooney\u2019s second novel really got a stranglehold on the world\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

\"Hamnet:Hamnet: Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley at Telluride Film Festival, in Colorado. Photograph: Vivien Killilea\/Getty <\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t have any scenes together in The Lost Daughter \u2013 a gripping take on an Elena Ferrante book \u2013 but it seems they did meet up during production. That professional relationship gained new shapes during the making of Hamnet. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we entered the film at the perfect juncture,\u201d Mescal says. \u201cI had a deep admiration for Jessie, both personally and professionally. But we didn\u2019t really know each other to the extent we got to know each other. It\u2019s kind of the dream way to start. Because there are no preconceived ideas. I was so curious. I was so fascinated about how Jessie might work. And I think, weirdly, we both work in similar ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is either chemistry or there\u2019s not,\u201d Buckley says. \u201cWhen there\u2019s not it\u2019s horrendous.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am not dumb enough to ask either for examples where they have failed to generate such chemistry with a costar. But I do wonder whether they can overcome such an obstacle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s very difficult to get past that,\u201d Mescal says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can. But it doesn\u2019t become the thing; it becomes something else,\u201d Buckley says. \u201cBut there was an undeniable energy and chemistry between us \u2013 and within that was so much trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Have we got used to seeing Irish actors in this position? Buckley is being inked in for that Os**r. Mescal was, alongside Glen Powell, Austin Butler and Michael B Jordan, among others, occupying the cover of last month\u2019s Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair magazine, within which he was described as cornering \u201cthe market for approachable-looking characters with tortured souls\u201d. <\/p>\n

I remember, as a teenager, literally seeing the institution of the church in Ireland disintegrate in front of your eyes<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Paul Mescal<\/p>\n

I suppose they did grow up after Ireland\u2019s mid-1990s boom. Maybe they are more comfortable with the notion of Irish cultural dominance than those who came of age during mass emigration and The Riordans. Or maybe not.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the Celtic Tiger<\/a>,\u201d Buckley says. \u201cCapitalism was at its strongest. Objects were important. What was deemed successful for both men and women was what objects you could acquire, not about your soul. I think, in that time, I felt very lost and found huge comfort in discovering Katharine Hepburn and seeing the untethered brilliance of her mind and her body and how fun that was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in Killarney, where her parents ran a guest house, she seems to have connected strongly with those older stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland,\u201d she says. \u201cThey lived with the life force on the outside of their skin. There was Gena Rowlands. These were uncompromising women. They were women who contained multitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The relatively modest age difference between the two led to them growing up in different Irelands. Mescal, who turns 30 in the new year, was not yet a teenager when the economy dramatically unravelled in 2008. The country he talks about sounds surprisingly like the one I remember.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a Celtic Tiger baby, but, yeah, I would associate my teens with the recession,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the big thing for me was growing up … not in a massively religious family but definitely with the hangovers of going to Mass on Sunday, and then being confronted with the allegations against the church. I remember, as a teenager, literally seeing the institution of the church in Ireland disintegrate in front of your eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PaulPaul Mescal: the actor playing for Kildare in the under-21 Leinster championship football final, against Dublin, in 2015. Photograph: Ryan Byrne\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Mescal\u2019s chief fixation as a young man was sport. He played Gaelic football for Kildare at minor and under-21 level, but he was forced to give it up after a jaw injury. It never crossed his mind that he would grow up to be an actor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recession was a big thing for me in terms of actually becoming an actor, because I was, like, \u2018Nobody\u2019s going to have a f**king job anyway,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI remember being so scared seeing money being tight at home and thinking, It\u2019s f**ked anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Paul Mescal: \u2018My favourite actors are Irish. There\u2019s a wildness. We do our own thing\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It feels almost as if he\u2019s talking about Ireland in the 1980s. People formed bands because they felt nothing else was going to fill their working day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you don\u2019t have choice, you can do the one thing that you feel compelled to do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIreland is now so full and thriving,\u201d Buckley adds. \u201cIt went through, maybe in the best way, a moment of trying to be curious about something that was never part of our DNA. Now there\u2019s a vibrancy. They are incubating an identity now. The creativity is born out of those moments. It feels like such a rebirth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Becoming a mother has made me more honest. When you feel the connection, the purest connection of your life, then that\u2019s it. What else are we doing if we\u2019re not actually connecting?<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Jessie Buckley<\/p>\n

Both Mescal and Buckley seem to have found a way of striking the balance between openness and privacy. They manage to be chatty and informal on the interview circuit but still keep the things that matter reasonably private.<\/p>\n

Nothing illustrates that better than the elegant discretion Buckley brought to conversations about her marriage in (we think) 2023. It eventually emerged on a food podcast that she and Freddie \u2013 who worked in mental health \u2013 had got hitched quietly a few months before the recording. \u201cI\u2019m very happy,\u201d she said civilly and finally when, in early 2024, I asked her<\/a> about the marriage.<\/p>\n

Coverage of her recent pregnancy was also kept politely minimal, but it\u2019s not the sort of thing you can entirely hide away. In April, at the CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, she brought her bump along when promoting Maggie Gyllenhaal<\/a>\u2019s upcoming The Bride! Later, as Hamnet premiered at Telluride, in Colorado, she was accompanied by an actual baby. The response to the film was beyond their most optimistic expectations.<\/p>\n

\"Hamnet:Hamnet: Jessie Buckley in Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s film. Photograph: Agata Grzybowska\/Focus Features <\/p>\n

\u201cChloe asked the audience to close their eyes and take three breaths,\u201d she says. \u201cI had my six-week-old daughter with me. And Telluride is so sensory. You go and see all these extraordinary films. You have the best film-makers and their singular imaginations expressing themselves. They are people who love film. And it\u2019s just such a thrill.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it must be a challenge manoeuvring a baby about one of the world\u2019s great film festivals. Such events are not exactly designed for families.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually been a little bit of a gift,\u201d she says. \u201cFor me, becoming a mother has made me more honest. When you feel the connection, the purest connection of your life, then that\u2019s it. What else are we doing if we\u2019re not actually connecting? And I\u2019m so proud of this film. Even promoting it feels like the next journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Jessie Buckley: \u2018I grew up in a household where music, writing and expressing yourself was really nurtured\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of Nomadland<\/a>, brings an admirably crepuscular touch to her adaptation of O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel. Shot largely in Wales, Hamnet begins as the most oblique of love stories before moving on to that central triggering catastrophe. <\/p>\n

\"Hamnet:Hamnet: Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. Photograph: Agata Grzybowska\/Focus Features <\/p>\n

Buckley dominates the latter half with a performance that moves from coiled interiority to cacophonous rage. But Mescal\u2019s characteristically muted turn as Shakespeare has also attracted much enthusiasm. It\u2019s a tricky challenge. He is playing a man we know and don\u2019t know. Shakespeare has spilt his psyche into his art, but we are not even sure what he looked like.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe preconceived historical idea of him, to me, is very boring,\u201d Mescal says. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t live his life thinking he\u2019s a genius. He can\u2019t live his life like that. He lives his life like how I think we live our lives. I want to tell stories. I want to make things people respond to. And he makes sacrifices. He asks his family to sacrifice certain things so that he can go off and do the thing that he is most compelled to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

We meet at the start of a long, long awards season that will take them up to the Oscars in March 2026. Most attention will be on Buckley, but Mescal looks certain to add a best-supporting-actor nomination to the best-actor nod he secured for Aftersun<\/a>, in 2023. <\/p>\n

There is also new work on the way. Mescal is about to play Paul McCartney<\/a> in Sam Mendes<\/a>\u2019 four-part biographical study of The Beatles. Next spring we will see Buckley as the title character in Gyllenhaal\u2019s take on Bride of Frankenstein.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much I could talk about them,\u201d Mescal says of The Beatles<\/a>. \u201cBut I will talk about that forever in a year\u2019s time or in two years\u2019 time. I don\u2019t want to load everybody up at the moment. But I\u2019m in it. And we haven\u2019t started yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about Gyllenhaal\u2019s feature? The trailer suggests we are in for something else: gothic, comic, noisy, off the wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s disobedient. It\u2019s punk. It ripples with petrol on fire,\u201d Buckley says. \u201cI had an absolute blast making it. Last year I got to embody two great female characters who are behind giants. Right? Cultural giants, archetypal giants: Frankenstein and Shakespeare. And we gave them voice, led by two extraordinary directors who happen to be women.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that we must part and they must get sucked back into the promotional whirl. Sorry for to having to ask that awkward Oscar question, but Buckley knows the way it is. Right?<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, it\u2019s your job,\u201d she says with an airy smile.<\/p>\n

Hamnet is in cinemas from Friday, January 9th; you can read Donald Clarke\u2019s review of it here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessie Buckley tenses up just once during our interview. She has every right to do so. I feel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[2974,430,120056,3628,156,9822,3631,120055,36049,59335,111,139,69,2584,467,468,11317],"class_list":{"0":"post-193140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-celtic-tiger","11":"tag-chloe-zhao","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-for-you","14":"tag-jessie-buckley","15":"tag-lir-academy","16":"tag-maggie-gyllenhaal","17":"tag-maggie-o-farrell","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-newzealand","20":"tag-nz","21":"tag-oscars","22":"tag-paul-mescal","23":"tag-sam-mendes","24":"tag-william-shakespeare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}