Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley reveal the real surprise in ‘Hamnet’

Great love can echo through the centuries. This seems like a heartbreaking truth hamnet, The latest film from Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnett Reveals the little-known story of William Shakespeare, his wife, and the love that saw them through times of joy and suffering. Additionally, this critically acclaimed play – starring Academy Award nominees Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley – reveals how his story informs one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, Hamlet.

Sat down with Mashable’s UK editor Shannon Connellan Hamnett Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal delve deeper into what it means to make a film with such rich history and intense emotion. For starters, she asked Mescal what it’s like to deal with the always-dreaded “to be or not to be” speech.

Mescal admitted that the scene gave him “huge anxiety”, elaborating that “Being Shakespeare but also saying Shakespeare and also giving that speech, that was always one of the bigger, more technical challenges.” Hamnett Gave the acclaimed actor a new understanding of Shakespeare’s writing. “Whenever I’ve approached Shakespeare before, it’s like this sacred text. And for me, subjectively playing Shakespeare within myself [Hamnet],” he explained,Oh no. These are the words that took part of his life to write. They are not words written on a page. They come from that. So there’s a little bit of freedom in that, where I leaned into that so I felt like I could avoid the spiders going on in my head while I was saying all this. So I feel very proud of it.”

For her part, Buckley plays Agnes True in O’Farrell’s novel, a woman who is “too wild for any man.” She enjoyed the role, telling Mashable, “She’s original. Every ounce of her is full. And she has such an uncompromising sense of herself and who she is.”

But of course, Hamnett There is more than just Agnes and Will. When asked about performing with the three children playing the Shakespearean brood, Mescal revealed that he, Jacoby Jupe, Olivia Lines, and Bodhi Rae Breathnach cleverly conspired to create a scene in which their characters would surprise Agnes with a little surprise. Macbeth – Specifically, the witches’ entrance. “We didn’t tell Jesse we were going to do this,” Mescal said, “so it was a real surprise. I had the kids practice… so that shot was on Jesse -”

“It was surreal,” Buckley said, picking up the sentence before praising Jupp’s stellar performance as a deeply committed witch. The stars spent their time working on films and with family. And you see the cinematic magic in it hamnet, Which is now running in select theatres. There will be a wide theatrical release on December 12.