Hamnet with Chloé Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell

To record an episode about Hamnet, the new film from Chloe Zhao, or not to record an episode about Hamnet? That was the question – and a question I answered in a heartbeat when Chloe’s team reached out late last year about chatting with the Nomadland writer-director. The historical drama, starring Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal, takes viewers inside the anguish of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes Hathaway, after the death of one of their children in 1596. In the movie, Shakespeare throws himself into his work as part of his mourning process, resulting in one of the best-loved and most influential plays of all time. In doing so, though, Agnes is left alone with just ghosts, grief and her remaining children – themselves angry and confused at Hamnet’s death – for company. 

Adapted from an acclaimed novel by Irish author Maggie O’Farrell, who joined Chloe and I for our conversation, the film is as emotionally bruising as they come. It’s a tale about parenthood, personhood, how storytellers process pain through their art and what it means to witness that. The film ends with this remarkable final scene shot at London’s historic Globe Theatre in which Shakespeare has transmuted his pain into a play that both pours salt into the deepest imaginable wound for Agnes, and seemingly offers her some closure. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, the three of us get into the evolution of that moment, and other key scenes from a film that won Best Drama and Best Actress for Buckley at the Golden Globes and is expected to be in the mix at this year's Oscars. Maggie talks about the connections between this story and her other work, such as I Am, I Am, I Am – which also dealt with mortality. And Chloe reveals how she uses colour as a storytelling weapon in Hamnet – with red representing Agnes and inky blues representing the Bard himself.

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