{"id":350647,"date":"2025-12-15T19:40:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T19:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/350647\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T19:40:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T19:40:20","slug":"making-of-hamnet-with-chloe-zhao-jessie-buckley-paul-mescal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/350647\/","title":{"rendered":"Making of \u2018Hamnet\u2019 With Chlo\u00e9 Zhao, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t
The story of the making of Hamnet<\/a> is one of agony and ecstasy. Reading Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel, an imagined but meticulously researched retelling of the death of a child that precipitated the writing of Hamlet, is like touching the void. (It is either, depending on whom you ask, a life-affirming dose of the full spectrum of human emotions or an exercise in utter masochism.) It\u2019s a book about art imitating life, and the process of adapting the work for the screen was full of life that imitated art.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn January of last year, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao was visiting New York when she experienced an intense personal crisis; she decided to take respite (or a twisted version of it) on a cross-country Amtrak train back to L.A. There was almost no cellphone reception, and it was impossible to sleep, but that\u2019s exactly what she was looking for. \u201cI felt I needed to purge out whatever volcanic thing was inside me,\u201d she says. The Oscar-winning filmmaker wrote and wrote, and by the time Zhao arrived at Union Station, she was so drowsy she nearly fainted while waiting for her Uber. But, she had 90 pages of a screenplay that became Hamnet.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Hamnet landed in bookstores in 2020, producer Liza Marshall already had plans to adapt it for the big screen. She\u2019d read it months earlier, delighting in the way it told a familiar story \u2014 that of Shakespeare\u2019s early life \u2014 from the totally unfamiliar female perspective of his wife, Agnes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAgnes has been written out of history, and in Maggie\u2019s version she doesn\u2019t even name William,\u201d Marshall says. \u201cHe\u2019s just \u2018the Latin tutor.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs soon as she secured the rights, Marshall targeted Zhao. She\u2019d heard the director was looking for a project about a witchy woman, and the Agnes in O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel is a healer who draws from the natural and, often, the mystical. O\u2019Farrell was pleased, too, as she wanted someone who would resist the urges to make the period drama too pristine, or to center Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

\n\tZhao was fresh off Marvel\u2019s Eternals and quite interested, but she had two potentially deal-breaking conditions. The first was that O\u2019Farrell agree to co-write the script. \u201cI thought: \u2018God, no,\u2019 \u201d says O\u2019Farrell. She was a fan of Zhao\u2019s, but was eager to move on to her next novel. Her first meeting with the director changed her mind, and she soon found herself swapping voice notes across continents (the author lives in Scotland). \u201cI would wake up in the morning and look at my phone and there would be 12 messages, some of which were a minute long, and the longest ever was 58,\u201d O\u2019Farrell says of Zhao\u2019s voiced thoughts. \u201cI would transcribe them; it was her way of working out how she feels about certain things while she talks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tZhao\u2019s second demand: She only wanted to write the film for Jessie Buckley<\/a>. The two met for the first time at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival, while the actress was promoting Women Talking, and they connected immediately. \u201cI\u2019m never looking for the actor, I\u2019m looking for the humanity underneath the acting,\u201d the filmmaker says. \u201cFearlessness, and a lack of vanity, and a person willing to take off their mask. Plus, when I went to Jessie\u2019s house, she has a kitchen just like Agnes\u2019.\u201d Buckley met Zhao for breakfast on the director\u2019s next trip to L.A., and didn\u2019t realize until afterward, when her agents sent her the book, that she was being considered for the role. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the only books that I\u2019ve stayed up all night to read,\u201d Buckley says. \u201cIt was like oxygen.\u201d The actress was drawn to the idea of doing a period piece with the Zhao touch \u2014 deeply felt, raw and a bit messy.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cIt was so embarrassing, but also a good humbling experience,\u201d Buckley says of working with the trained hawk. \u201cIt was our first week of shooting and this hawk just did not care about me. He had no interest in playing the game. You\u2019re standing there, with your hand up and 50 crew waiting, and nothing. All we managed to get was this one shot.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAgata Grzybowska\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Zhao was courting Buckley, she was also courting Paul Mescal<\/a>. He\u2019d been at Telluride, too, and the two actors were already friendly from their time filming Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s The Lost Daughter. Zhao asked for a meeting \u2014 to Mescal\u2019s slight dismay.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI never want to meet with the directors I admire, and I\u2019m always secretly hoping it will fall through,\u201d he says. \u201cMeetings can feel transactional, and you\u2019re in this desperate situation where you want them to like you, while you already like them. But when I met with Chlo\u00e9, I was sitting looking out at the river, and she said, \u2018Oh, that face makes sense for Shakespeare.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Oh good, we\u2019re talking about the project, so I don\u2019t have to think about what I\u2019m going to say next.\u2019 \u201d Mescal, having already read and loved the novel, was in with one caveat: That Shakespeare be a man of feeling, rather than thinking. \u201cWe assume he\u2019s an academic, but I think he\u2019s more animalistic,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t \u201cFalling in love with Jessie Buckley onscreen is incredibly easy and a lovely feeling to get to play,\u201d says Mescal, who also notes that the pressure of playing William Shakespeare did weigh on him by the end of the film. \u201cI was ready to put it to bed. It was so intense, and I\u2019m so grateful for the experience, but I was like: Enough now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAgata Grzybowska\/Focus Features (2)<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time Zhao delivered the final script, the production was on a fast trajectory because Mescal had a hard out to start his press for Gladiator II. She built out the rest of the cast with British acting heavyweights: Emily Watson, who plays Will\u2019s mother, has a history of performing with the real Royal Shakespeare Company; Joe Alwyn, as a friend of Zhao\u2019s, was eager to be part of the film even in a more limited role as Agnes\u2019 brother; as Hamnet, they cast Jacobi Jupe, younger brother to acclaimed 20-year-old actor Noah Jupe.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe team \u2014 also led by cinematographer Lucasz Zal, who previously worked with Buckley on I\u2019m Thinking of Ending Things, and production designer Fiona Crombie \u2014 aimed to shoot on location as much as possible to create the feeling that they were an intimate community of creatives. \u201cIt became clear during preproduction that that wasn\u2019t going to work,\u201d says Crombie. The existing homes from the era of the Bard were under the U.K.\u2019s strict historical protections, and the real-life Globe Theatre, the site of the film\u2019s highly charged denouement, cost about 60,000 pounds per day for a full buyout. They decided to shoot three weeks of exteriors in Wales, where, on a scouting walk, they found the perfect tree \u2014 complete with a symbolic black hole \u2014 for Agnes\u2019 first birth scene. (Crombie later dressed the forest herself, adding roots and\u00a0ferns.)<\/p>\n

\n\tCrombie and her team built the rest of the sets on a backlot outside London, using the Tudor architecture that was prominent during the late 1500s to convey what it felt like for Shakespeare to try to make art in their small, rural town and later for Agnes to live alongside the ghost of her late son. \u201cIt\u2019s made of boxes,\u201d Crombie says. \u201cBoxing her in, boxing him in. They\u2019re contained by the heaviness of this architecture, and it\u2019s a complete contrast to the beautiful, open, green forest.\u201d She filled the set with props that were sourced from vintage markets in France and newly created artifacts (like hinges created on-site by a blacksmith).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tZhao tapped heavyweight actors for the supporting, roles, too. Joe Alwyn is an old friend of the director\u2019s and was excited to work with her as Agnes\u2019 brother, Bartholomew. Zhao also cast Noah Jupe, brother of Jacobi Jupe (who plays the title character), to play Hamlet in the movie\u2019s version of the play. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tThey built their own Globe Theatre from scratch at 75 percent scale of the original to allow for a more intimate feeling on camera. Within the spaces, Zal filmed in an almost documentary-like style: They built compositions and used simple, steady camerawork wherever possible. \u201cMy job was just to capture the moments between Agnes and Will, or the weather, the wind in the trees. The actors had the ideas, and we just followed them with the camera,\u201d says the cinematographer.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of Zhao\u2019s hallmarks is a distaste for the more traditional forms of preparation. She prefers not to discuss scenes in depth before filming, and she considers the script to be more of a loose architecture. \u201cWhat\u2019s written on the page is just there to look good for the studio,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cI know that I\u2019m not going to do it. You have to keep things open for something miraculous to happen.\u201d She doesn\u2019t like actors to do character work, either. After Buckley and Mescal both signed on, they found themselves in New York at the same time filming other projects (The Bride and The History of Sound, respectively). \u201cThe beginning of our prep work was going to this place called Joy, in the East Village, and dancing to ABBA, which is really essential to the relationship,\u201d says Buckley. Adds Mescal: \u201cIt was actually show tunes night, and they finished out with ABBA.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cTo actually see the faces of the woman on my right, and the man behind me who took my hand afterwards, with tears running down his eyes, saying, \u2018I haven\u2019t cried in 10 years, this is why we go to the theater,\u2019\u202f\u201d Buckley says. \u201cHamlet becomes the vessel for us to try and touch our inner voids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAgata Grzybowska\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tWhere some might see chaos, her actors saw openness and opportunity. \u201cI would send Chlo\u00e9 my fever-writing, or a picture, and they would become scenes,\u201d says Buckley. The night before they were set to shoot the scene where Will goes back to London in the wake of Hamnet\u2019s death, she was thinking (and journaling) about birth and loss.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe imagined Agnes\u2019 skin as a fragile shell, and the next day that Agnes should be peeling eggs during the scene. Mescal felt that there was something missing in Will\u2019s return to London, and pitched an idea that became the rehearsal scene, where we see Will admonishing his Hamlet for botching the \u201cI am myself indifferent honest\u201d line. \u201cIt\u2019s communicating artistic control, not because he\u2019s a control freak but because what he\u2019s saying is so personal that it matters that much to him,\u201d he says. \u201cCan you imagine your son has just died, and you\u2019ve written about him, and an actor comes in and doesn\u2019t know the lines? You would fucking hate people. That\u2019s a highly charged scene, and I loved how it felt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe production team toured the original Globe Theatre on London\u2019s South Bank, but decided to construct their own version \u2014 at 75 percent scale.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tHamnet is, at its heart, a\u00a0book about grief. O\u2019Farrell writes, to devastating degree, about the ways that Hamnet\u2019s death threatens to mark Agnes permanently: as a guilty party (she failed to keep her son safe from the plague) and a broken woman (her marriage begins to disintegrate under the weight of loss). It\u2019s an incredibly interior novel, and we follow Agnes\u2019 thoughts all the way to London\u2019s Globe Theatre, where, much to her dismay, her husband is staging a play named after their son. As she watches the tragedy unfold onstage, she sees that Will has not run away from his grief, but written himself \u2014 and Hamnet \u2014 a new ending, a way to bring his memory to the masses each night. To convey this cinematically is, to put it lightly, nearly impossible.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFor the interior scenes, production designer Fiona Crombie and her team built authentic Tudor-style homes \u2014 some of which were constructed inside existing, but historically protected, buildings. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAgata Grzybowska\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time the Hamnet crew made it to the final week of filming, everyone was struggling. Zhao, true to form, had only a loose outline for the last scene: Hamlet dies onstage, Agnes looks around at everyone, and then a couple of \u201cnice lines\u201d to describe the feeling she\u2019s having. \u201cBut when we shot it, on the fifth to last day, I go, \u2018Shit,\u2019 \u201d says Zhao. \u201d \u2018We don\u2019t have a movie.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

\n\tBuckley felt lost, too. \u201cI was thinking, \u2018I hate myself, and everybody can see that I\u2019m lost,\u2019 \u201d she says. Mescal had one of the only major disagreements he\u2019s ever had on set. \u201cChlo\u00e9 said in passing that at the end of the movie, the relationship was over and that\u2019s OK. I was like, \u2018That\u2019s not the film I\u2019ve been making,\u2019 \u201d he says. \u201cI was in a blind panic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEnter \u201cOn the Nature of Daylight.\u201d The musical composition, written by Max Richter, has been used in everything from Arrival to Shutter Island to The Last of Us, to the point where it\u2019s almost compulsory. But Richter himself was scoring the film \u2014 he describes the score as the \u201camniotic fluid\u201d that holds the family\u2019s story \u2014 and his work was heavy on Buckley\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile listening to the song on her drive home that night, she had a revelation. \u201cI recognized that Agnes is trying to hold this pain on her own, and it\u2019s impossible,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s this weird thing on sets sometimes, where actors and extras must be kept separate. And I thought, \u2018I need to surrender to the 300 people that are around me in the scene.\u2019 \u201d The next morning, she texted Zhao a link to the \u201cThis Bitter Earth\u201d rendition of Richter\u2019s instrumental used in Shutter Island.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t Zhao had her cast do weekly \u201cdance takes\u201d to music right after a scene was completed, and Jacobi Jupe (left) requested a special edition on the day he and the other child actors (Bodhi Rae Breathnach and Olivia Lynes) had to film the death scene. \u201cHe asked to do \u2018Staying Alive,\u2019\u202f\u201d says Zhao. \u201cThe music kicked in right when the camera was on him at the end, and he came back to life, and the gaffer changed the light into a disco ball and we all went crazy.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAgata Grzybowska\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was ending a very important relationship at the same time, and I was in the car on the way to work feeling the pain of separation,\u201d says Zhao. \u201cI played the song, which I\u2019d never heard, and suddenly I was reaching for the window of the car. I realized, I myself needed strength from the world around me to survive my breakup, and the ending just came to me shot by shot.\u201d The director arrived at the soundstage and announced they were going to reshoot the entire ending. She wrote the version we see in the film, which culminates in the entire audience reaching out to Hamlet onstage.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cChlo\u00e9 had me go off and cut down Hamlet,\u201d says O\u2019Farrell. \u201cI had to edit Shakespeare. I felt sick. I thought, \u2018I should say a Hail Mary before I do this.\u2019 \u201d Crombie\u2019s team realized the stage, as built, was too high to allow for Buckley and the extras to reach each other effectively, so they brought in an army of wheelbarrows and started frantically pouring soil to raise up the floor. Zal decided to operate the camera himself for the final shot. \u201cYou can see the whole world on her face,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cThe actors had the ideas, and we just followed them with the camera,\u201d says cinematographer Lucasz Zal (left), who was also reuniting with Buckley after shooting her for 2020\u2019s I\u2019m Thinking of Ending Things. \u201cShe hasn\u2019t changed,\u201d he adds. \u201cShe\u2019s always laughing and smiling, and as a crew we had to be very close with her \u2014 as Hamnet was dying, we were right there whispering in her face. It was a very special experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAgata Grzybowska\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company felt immediate catharsis within the new ending. They filmed over four more days, playing \u201cOn the Nature of Daylight\u201d on repeat the entire time. When they wrapped, Zhao blasted Rihanna\u2019s \u201cWe Found Love\u201d and all 300 people broke out into song and dance. When the music stopped, they found themselves profoundly changed. \u201cThis experience of making the movie made me feel like I could have children,\u201d says Zhao. \u201cI think we can forget that women\u2019s intuition, and our wisdom, are so powerful. It\u2019s something I\u2019m really considering now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cIf we had gone out to him at the beginning, with a part of that size, I don\u2019t know that he would have done it,\u201d says producer Liza Marshall of casting Noah Jupe to play Hamlet in the final scenes. \u201cBut Chlo\u00e9 became close to their family because they were on set with Jacobi, so it merged out of that relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAgata Grzybowska\/Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tBuckley had one last day of filming pickup shots by herself (\u201cIt was horrible, everyone was gone and I just cried my eyes out in every room of the house and none of it was usable,\u201d she says with a laugh). She had spent the entire production struggling with the weight of her own desire to become a mother, and there had been moments \u2014 like wearing the prosthetic belly \u2014 that were quite painful. \u201cI wanted it so badly, and it wasn\u2019t happening, and the enormity of wanting that while making this movie was so much,\u201d she says. When she returned to London, she went on a long walk with Mescal along Regent\u2019s Canal, processing her emotions. A week later, she was pregnant.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Focus Features<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story first appeared in a December stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The story of the making of Hamnet is one of agony and ecstasy. Reading Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel, an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[10546,75346,88,77739,76655,28724],"class_list":{"0":"post-350647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-awards","9":"tag-chloe-zhao","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-hamnet","12":"tag-jessie-buckley","13":"tag-paul-mescal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}