{"id":211746,"date":"2026-01-01T15:38:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T15:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/211746\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T15:38:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T15:38:20","slug":"i-always-wanted-paul-mescal-to-play-shakespeare-says-ofarrell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/211746\/","title":{"rendered":"I always wanted Paul Mescal to play Shakespeare, says O’Farrell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Universal\/UPIUniversal\/UPI<\/p>\n

Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell was born in Coleraine but grew up in Wales and Scotland<\/p>\n

The writer of Oscar-tipped movie Hamnet has said she always saw Paul Mescal taking on the role of Shakespeare in the film adaption.<\/p>\n

Maggie O’Farrell recalled seeing Mescal in the role of Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in Dublin before his break-out role in the hit show Normal People. <\/p>\n

Based on O’Farrell’s award-winning novel of the same name, Hamnet is a fictional account exploring the lives of William Shakespeare, his wife Agnes and their family.<\/p>\n

It delves into the impact of the death of Agnes and William’s son, Hamnet, and how it could have influenced one of Shakespeare’s most enduring masterpieces, Hamlet. <\/p>\n

‘Ireland is an important part of my identity’<\/p>\n

O’Farrell co-wrote the screenplay alongside director Chlo\u00e9 Zhao<\/p>\n

O’Farrell was born in Coleraine, County Londonderry, to Irish parents, but grew up in Wales and Scotland.<\/p>\n

“I mostly grew up in Britain but we would visit Ireland all the time throughout my childhood, it is a very important part of my identity and who I am,” she said. <\/p>\n

The film has a particularly Irish feel by O’Farrell’s own admission with actress Jessie Buckley taking on the role of Agnes. <\/p>\n

\"UniversalUniversal Pictures\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

O’Farrell says Jessie Buckley is a ‘dream Agnes’<\/p>\n

O’Farrell joked that upon hearing the cast, she had said to director and co-writer Chlo\u00e9 Zhao: “Did you actually do any auditions or did you just go on holiday to Ireland?”<\/p>\n

According to O’Farrell, Zhao had always wanted Buckley to take on the role of Agnes, something she was “totally on board with”. <\/p>\n

“She is a dream Agnes, she does an incredible job inhabiting that character,” she said. <\/p>\n

O’Farrell said she had always wanted Mescal for the role of Shakespeare. <\/p>\n

“I saw him years ago at the Gate Theatre playing Stephen Dedalus… even then he stood out a mile,” she said. <\/p>\n

“There is an interesting thematic link between Stephen Dedalus and Hamlet, so I always kept saying Paul Mescal, Paul Mescal.”<\/p>\n

\"UniversalUniversal Pictures\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

O’Farrell says despite all that has been written about Shakespeare, the women is his life have been left as ‘footnotes’ <\/p>\n

Speaking about researching for her novel, O’Farrell said: “There are no shortage of books on Shakespeare.”<\/p>\n

“You could spend the rest of your life reading books about Shakespeare and quite a lot of people do.”<\/p>\n

O’Farrell read extensively about the playwright but said there is still “awful lot about his biography we don’t know”.<\/p>\n

“There is not a lot written about Shakespeare’s wife or his mother or his daughters,” she said. <\/p>\n

“They are people whose history has been written in water and they are very much footnotes in his story.”<\/p>\n

In order to understand the lives of the female characters, O’Farrell said the research was “more hands on”.<\/p>\n

‘I did learn to fly a kestrel’<\/p>\n

\"DaveDave Benett\/Getty Images for Focus Features<\/p>\n

Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao, Liza Marshall and Maggie O’Farrell at a Special Screening of Hamnet in December<\/p>\n

“I did learn to fly a kestrel, which is actually the most fun thing I have ever done in the name of work,” she said. <\/p>\n

“I made bread using a Tudor recipe, I planted my own Elizabethan medicinal garden and I went on a course to find out how to turn plants into medicines.”<\/p>\n

In the book, Agnes is rumoured to be the daughter of a forest witch. <\/p>\n

She can be seen in the film with spending time with her pet hawk and picking herbs for medical concoctions. <\/p>\n

\"KristinaKristina Bumphrey\/Variety via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal at the Hamnet New York Special Screening<\/p>\n

Initially, O’Farrell was unsure about being involved in the writing process for the film but said Zhao was a “very persuasive person”. <\/p>\n

“It’s been really interesting, I feel like I’ve learned an awful lot but I was apprehensive at the beginning,” she said. <\/p>\n

“I know how to construct a narrative for the page but I didn’t really know how to construct one for cinema.”<\/p>\n

However, O’Farrell said she and Zhao have “different but compatible skills”. <\/p>\n

“She’s very good at the macro vision of what the film needed to be and she had a clear idea of which threads of the books she was going to keep”, she said. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, O’Farrell said she could help when it came to creating scenes with 16th Century dialogue. <\/p>\n

“My kids call me a neek,” she joked, “it’s a cross between a geek and a nerd”.<\/p>\n

Hamnet has received six Golden Globe nominations in total, including best actress in drama for Buckley and best supporting male actor for Mescal. <\/p>\n

The film will be released in UK cinemas on 9 January. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Universal\/UPI Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell was born in Coleraine but grew up in Wales and Scotland The writer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-211746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211746","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=211746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}