Chloé Zhao’s interpretation of Maggie O’Farrell’s historical fiction, Hamnet is a strong contender at the very least for Jessie Buckley winning a few best actress nods in her role as Agnes Hathaway. It was important for Paul Mescal to create a version of her husband who gave Jessie the space to shine while also creating his own complete character.
Nadine Whitney spoke to Paul about the husband and father, William Shakespeare.
Nadine Whitney: Few people think of Shakespeare as a husband and a father. How important was it to create a version of the writer as both?
Paul Mescal: For people who haven’t read the book, he’s not referred to William Shakespeare. We don’t know him as William Shakespeare. We know him either as the Latin tutor, or the Husband, or Will. They’re the three titles that are given to him.
Those titles feel novel when you’re reading the book, but actually they’re telling you what the subject of the story is about in relation to him. He is the husband to the protagonist who is Agnes, who is Jessie Buckley. He’s not aware of his own myth because it doesn’t exist yet. He’s an artist from Stratford who doesn’t even know he’s an artist. He has to be told. He has to be coaxed by Agnes to go and do the thing. There’s no sense of grandeur with him yet.
There is a sense that there’s an elemental thing within him that needs to be released. But he needs Agnes to do that. That made the writer and the artist kind of secondary to me, and it was more so about this is somebody who is a great artist because he invests so deeply in his relationships around him. He, I think, for all of his absence, loves being a father. He loves his children. He loves his wife.
The concept of him being a great writer, a humanist, I think comes from the fact that he invested very fully in his life and it reminds me that’s what I think we have to be doing as artists. It’s very easy in moments like this when you’re doing a press tour for example when you’re talking about art the whole time. Or you’re on the road or something, or you’re on set, you don’t go back to the well of your own life — Jessie was saying — you’re gonna run out of water. You’re gonna run out of space where your ideas about humanity are coming from.
I think that was what ultimately the film was interested in talking about.
Nadine Whitney: Jessie Buckley spoke about how Chloé Zhao instinctively knows how to open and close a scene.
Could you expand on why actors feel that way, and if you agree.
Paul Mescal: I do agree. I don’t know how she does it. I don’t know how she opens. But that’s such a good observation. The reason I think she’s able to do it is because she doesn’t necessarily use a shot plan. So, she’s watching the scene from roughly where she thinks camera’s going to be and she’ll just start playing the scene. As a result, she’s not coming in with any intention of how the scene should look or feel. She’s getting in a room with normally, say, if it’s a scene with me and Jessie, it will just be me, Jessie, Chloé and Lukasz Zal [the cinematographer] in a room. We will start dipping at it but not necessarily rehearsing it at like performance level. And I think that is maybe how Chloé goes about it. But Chloé is kind of a witch. She’s able to direct in a way that I don’t think many others are.
