Their film wrecks audiences with its exploration of romantic intimacy, grief and the inner lives of artists. Working with director Chloé Zhao — and each other — changed them forever.
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LONDON — It’s a chilly Monday evening and no one seems to notice as Jessie Buckley, wrapped in a sweater and a warm coat, strolls up to the Hackney wine bar Bastardo. She’s early for our interview, although Paul Mescal, dressed similarly, isn’t far behind. There’s a quick catch-up — he’s just come from rehearsals on Sam Mendes’ quartet of forthcoming Beatles films (he’s playing Paul McCartney) and she’s been home with her 4-month-old baby.
But neither wastes time on pleasantries. They’re here to discuss “Hamnet” (in theaters Nov. 26), filmmaker Chloé Zhao’s shattering adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning 2020 novel, and both are so eager to reflect on the experience, they stay past our inflexibly allocated time by nearly 20 minutes.
“I’ve worked with f— great people,” says Buckley, 35, Oscar-nominated for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter” and the burning heart of “Women Talking” and “Wild Rose.” Settling onto the bench next to me, she begins to work her way through an enormous bottle of water. Mescal sits across from us, sipping on a gin and tonic.
“But, and I really feel this in my bones, this” — she gestures toward her co-star — “was like meeting a match. I know I’m going to meet you at very significant pillar moments of my life that are going to move something to the next phase.”
“It still feels like that,” Mescal, 29, the breakout star of “Aftersun” and “All of Us Strangers,” says. “This was all I could ever want from a job.”
“Hamnet” follows a young William Shakespeare (Mescal) as he meets Agnes (Buckley), whose wild nature stands in contrast to his own erudite one. There’s an electricity between them, but also a sincere depth. The story is fictional, based on both historical research and imagination. What’s true is that the couple’s son, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), died at age 11, a catastrophic loss. In the film, Shakespeare writes his most famous play, “Hamlet,” out of his grief — an artistic achievement that also frees Agnes from her suffering.
Mescal had approached Zhao about working together. Buckley was the only actor the director wanted for Agnes.
“She’s a storyteller in her heart,” Zhao, 43, says, speaking separately over Zoom from Los Angeles. “But she also has something else, which is quite rare, and that’s a lack of vanity. Vanity is the enemy of authenticity.”
The Oscar-winning filmmaker discusses her career after “Eternals,” adapting Shakespeare’s family story and what Ryan Coogler said to her after he saw “Hamnet.”
Mescal and Buckley hadn’t worked together before “Hamnet.” Both had roles in “The Lost Daughter,” but they didn’t share any shooting time together. So after being cast in “Hamnet,” the actors met for drinks in New York City. It was early 2024, months ahead of the shoot.
“We had a really drunken night out — I can’t even remember where,” Mescal says. (It was at East Village bar Joyface, according to Buckley, and ABBA was involved.)
“I know exactly what you said,” Buckley interrupts. Her voice rises in volume. “And I should probably tell you that it kind of pissed me off, but you were right.” She looks at him. “Should I say this?”
“Absolutely,” Mescal agrees, jovially.
“You said, ‘The thing about you is you have fire in you and I’m going to stop it,’” Buckley recalls. “And I thought: Good luck.”
Mescal racks his brain for the memory. “All of this was in the context of the film,” he clarifies. “But I knew I was going toe-to-toe with the person who I’ve witnessed to have the biggest engine, this massive scale of humanity, on-screen. I was so nervous about the job for that reason.”
“Even from the first time we did a chemistry read on this, that potency was just there,” Buckley says. “The crackle in our cells and between each other was already there. It was like lava, something that was moving but had solidness around it.”
The actors reunited that summer to begin shooting “Hamnet” in England. Buckley came straight from wrapping Gyllenhaal’s forthcoming “Bride of Frankenstein” reimagining, “The Bride!,” complete with bleached hair and eyebrows (she plays the title role). For the first day of joint rehearsal, Zhao brought the pair into an unorthodox tantric workshop. It was only the three of them in the room.
“It began with me having to embody a penis and [Jessie] having to embody a vagina,” Mescal recalls. He chuckles, adding, “We stood on opposite sides of the room with this chanting music.”
“There was an objective overview in my mind like, ‘OK, just surrender to this situation,’” Buckley says, more seriously. “But really it was like, ‘What’s going on?’”
Zhao describes the rehearsal as an “experiment in polarity” that was essential to the story.
“The greater the polarity is, the union becomes even more powerful,” she explains. “I wanted Paul to have absolute order and Jessie absolute chaos and to see what happens. When they merged together and when they started kissing, I was watching the whole movie playing out.”
Although it may not have been immediately apparent on that first day, there was a method to Zhao’s madness. She encouraged the actors to get out of their heads, to be curious and to ground themselves only in the present moment. Every day, Zhao had the cast take three deep breaths in a meditative ritual. She brought in a dream coach, Kim Gillingham, to help connect the actors to their subconscious. Emotions were welcome.
“She was sewing every part of herself through the experience as well,” Buckley says. “So it’s not like she was objectifying you. She was actually looking to express something from within you and make sure that you’re so seated in your body that the collision can create something new.”
“And she brings her feelings into the room,” Mescal adds. “Traditional leaders are often stoic and Chloé is not that. Chloé is very good at being practical but also being vulnerable as a leader.”
“And it means your curiosity is always creating out of that space,” Buckley says. “Rather than trying to project any idea or fear onto something before you already meet it.”
Zhao describes her approach to directing as finding “a balance between chaos and order.” She knows what a scene needs and when to control it or to step back.
“I allow whatever they bring in to come through,” Zhao says. “We rarely talk about how this character feels or what they should do. They just come and be in the moment.”
In the scene in which young Hamnet dies, Agnes unleashes a visceral howl. The character’s loss is so tangible you can feel it through the screen as if she’s voicing the most primal version of grief possible. It wasn’t scripted.
“That was just something that came out,” Buckley says, brushing it off when asked how she did it. She seems reluctant to unpack the moment. She shrugs. “I think we did maybe three takes of that in different setups.”
Zhao sees the moment as a collective expression of pain, with Buckley channeling the emotion of the community like a medicine woman. She and Buckley didn’t discuss Agnes’ scream ahead of time.
“By the time we get to that scene, everyone was coming to set with their own loss, with their own grief, and you could hear a pin drop,” Zhao says. “It just came out because that’s what she was doing. She was allowing herself to become a lightning conductor. When you’re feeling the vibration of everybody around you, holding that grief and that loss, and when you are present, it’s going to come through.”
William’s reaction is almost the opposite, a withholding of grief in parallel with Agnes’ overt response. Mescal tried several different registers of emotion for the scene.
“I’m really glad Chloé went with the more internalized ones because then it would just be two people externalizing,” Mescal says. “That’s hard for an audience to absorb. He externalizes it much later. And when you’re trying to imagine how somebody would be in this situation, there are so many horrible ways that you could imagine being.”
The film’s depiction of grief has rightly been at the center of the conversation around “Hamnet,” with their revelatory performances resulting in immense Oscar buzz for both actors. But Mescal and Buckley were almost more interested in the relationship between William and Agnes and how artists navigate the trappings of conventional life.
“She recognizes the capacity of expression in this man is bigger than the place he lives and the house that they share together,” Buckley says of her Agnes. “And it’s actually bigger than even this lifetime. In order to love something, you have to let go, right? After the unimaginable loss of a child, it’s through his expression that it becomes immortal.”
“Lots of people quite rightfully focus on the grief of this film, which is huge and it’s an amazingly articulated story by Maggie and Chloé,” Mescal says. “But I’m incredibly proud of the investment that we put into the relationship to begin with, because without that there’s nothing to lose.”
The first half of the film depicts this complexly wrought relationship, revealing the couple’s connection. There’s a levity to it, but also a profound intimacy. Ultimately, William’s need to write plays is larger than what his home life can contain.
“It’s a very honest conflict of a relationship,” Buckley says. “The need of each other, but also the need of the world.”
It’s a sentiment both actors understand. Buckley is married to a therapist and says she doesn’t feel constrained by having a family. Still, she remembers her mother, a talented singer, never getting to fully express herself beyond the local church.
“My mom has always been somebody who’s had her two hands up with the world, but she is a mother of five as well,” Buckley says. “She didn’t know you had an option for more. I think that’s the hardest thing about being a mother. She wanted to share so much of herself and I saw how powerful and potent that feeling inside her was.”
Now that Buckley is a mother herself, she understands family and art existing alongside your own identity. “The best thing motherhood has given me is that you cut the bull— and you become more honest,” she says. “The hard side is you’re divided into three people and you’re trying to find the ground.”
Mescal has been dating singer Gracie Abrams for more than a year, something he is reluctant to discuss in the press. But he will say he finds it less challenging to balance being in a relationship after making “Hamnet.”
“I think it’s a bit easier, actually, than it was before for me,” he says. “You don’t know how long you’re going to have this opportunity to have a microphone where your expression hopefully lands to an audience.”
That compulsion to perform unites the two. Although Buckley is currently taking a break while her baby is young, she can’t shake her inherent desire to create. Being part of “Hamnet” reminded them both that it’s important to be selective.
“There’s a lot that’s bad,” she says. “There are a lot of bad scripts.”
“There’s more bad than good,” Mescal jumps in.
Now that Buckley’s a mother, she can’t justify leaving home for three months to film one of those, she says. Making “Hamnet” was like reaching for an untouchable void.
“I want community,” she says, her voice rising again. “I want a group of artists that come together and are all hungry in the same way. I want to experiment. I want new language. I want more singular leaders and voices like Chloé.”
“We have so many brilliant friends who would want that,” Mescal says.
“The reason an artist cuts through is because their work is singular and it isn’t homogenized,” Buckley says. “We have a responsibility to help bring that out. I can’t be fed any other way. I can’t do it anymore.”
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As they describe the process of making “Hamnet,” it seems like the nine weeks it took to film must have been overwhelming. Living in those grieving characters would take a toll on anyone. And although they recall many wordless moments of repose between takes, the shoot enlivened the actors far more than it exhausted them.
“I was having wild discoveries about who I was in the middle of it,” Mescal says. “Huge. It’s a difficult intensity to try and communicate. But it felt very special. When I was looking at it objectively, I was like: This is a shoot that you will remember for the rest of your life.”
He turns to Buckley. “I’m curious as to how you felt,” he says.
“I felt invigorated,” Buckley replies. “There was a lot of creation in it. It felt like it wasn’t stagnant.” She sighs. “It was something bigger than the moon.”
Our conversation is over too quickly, despite running longer than planned. Buckley is eager to get home to her baby. Mescal has another day of rehearsal tomorrow. But first, I ask Mescal if he thinks he succeeded in containing Buckley’s fire.
“I don’t think anyone can ever achieve that,” Mescal acknowledges, grinning. “But I gave it a good go.”
Buckley lets out a guttural, defiant laugh.
“I felt like a prizefighter working with her,” Mescal adds. “Jessie makes you bigger. She makes you match fists. She makes you surprise yourself in ways I’d never experienced before with anybody else.”
Never one to be outdone, Buckley offers some final thoughts. “It takes a pretty gigantic soul to fill these spaces, like playing Shakespeare or Paul McCartney, and I think Paul is gigantic,” she says. “It’s very rare that you meet somebody in our job that can actually hold the space of being a giant.”
“That’s mad,” Mescal says, shaking his head.
“But I think you can hold it and also be so human,” she says. “That’s no bloody wonder why he’s playing William Shakespeare, the ultimate humanist. Not many people can actually do that genuinely.”
After hugs and farewells, they walk back out into the night, still unnoticed. It’s a fleetingly private moment before they uncover their souls for the whole world.
