Sometimes art doesn’t just imitate life—it transforms it entirely.
The making of Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s devastating novel about Shakespeare’s lost son, became its own story of grief, creation, and unexpected miracles.
What began as Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao’s attempt to purge personal pain on a cross-country train ride evolved into a film that would change everyone involved—in ways nobody saw coming.
This is how chaos, intuition, and 300 strangers reaching toward each other created something profound.
A Screenplay Born From Crisis
January 2023 found Zhao experiencing what she describes as an intense personal crisis while visiting New York. Rather than fly home, she chose an Amtrak train to Los Angeles—three days with virtually no cell reception and zero chance of sleep.
I felt I needed to purge out whatever volcanic thing was inside me.
By the time she stumbled into Union Station, nearly fainting from exhaustion while waiting for her Uber, Zhao had written 90 pages. That volcanic outpouring became the Hamnet screenplay.
Centering the Woman Written Out of History
Producer Liza Marshall had secured film rights to O’Farrell’s novel before it even hit bookstores in 2020. What captivated her was the radical perspective shift—telling Shakespeare’s story through his wife, Agnes, a woman history had nearly erased.
Agnes has been written out of history, and in Maggie’s version she doesn’t even name William. He’s just ‘the Latin tutor.’
Marshall immediately targeted Zhao, knowing she wanted to direct something about a witchy woman. O’Farrell’s Agnes—a healer who draws from nature and mysticism—fit perfectly. The author herself approved, wanting someone who’d resist making another pristine period drama centered on Shakespeare.
Two Non-Negotiable Demands
Fresh off Marvel’s Eternals, Zhao was interested but had conditions that could’ve killed the deal immediately.
First: O’Farrell had to co-write the script. The author’s initial reaction? “God, no.” She wanted to move on to her next novel. But one meeting changed everything, launching a transatlantic collaboration conducted through voice notes—sometimes 12 messages waiting each morning, the longest clocking in at 58 minutes.
I would transcribe them; it was her way of working out how she feels about certain things while she talks.
Second: She’d only write the film for Jessie Buckley. The two met at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival and connected immediately over what Zhao calls “the humanity underneath the acting.”
I’m looking for fearlessness, and a lack of vanity, and a person willing to take off their mask. Plus, when I went to Jessie’s house, she has a kitchen just like Agnes’.
Buckley didn’t realize she was being considered until after their breakfast meeting, when her agents sent the book. She stayed up all night reading.
It was like oxygen.
Shakespeare as Feeling, Not Thinking
Paul Mescal was also at Telluride, already friends with Buckley from filming The Lost Daughter. When Zhao requested a meeting, he felt conflicted—he admires directors from afar, finding meetings transactional.
But Zhao opened simply, looking at him across from a river view.
Oh, that face makes sense for Shakespeare.
Mescal was in—with one caveat. He wanted Shakespeare portrayed as a man of feeling rather than an academic.
We assume he’s an academic, but I think he’s more animalistic.
Building a World From Scratch
Production designer Fiona Crombie wanted location shooting to create intimate community among the creative team. Reality intervened—existing Elizabethan homes fell under strict U.K. historical protections, and the real Globe Theatre cost 60,000 pounds daily for full buyout.
They shot three weeks of exteriors in Wales, where they found the perfect tree—complete with symbolic black hole—for Agnes’ first birth scene. Crombie personally dressed the forest with roots and ferns.
Everything else was built on a London backlot using Tudor architecture to convey entrapment.
It’s made of boxes. Boxing her in, boxing him in. They’re contained by the heaviness of this architecture, and it’s a complete contrast to the beautiful, open, green forest.
They even constructed their own Globe Theatre at 75 percent scale for greater intimacy on camera. Cinematographer Lucasz Zal filmed documentary-style with simple, steady camerawork.
My 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.
Dancing to ABBA as Preparation
Zhao has little patience for traditional prep. She avoids discussing scenes in depth beforehand, treating scripts as loose architecture.
What’s written on the page is just there to look good for the studio. I know that I’m not going to do it. You have to keep things open for something miraculous to happen.
When Buckley and Mescal found themselves in New York simultaneously filming other projects, their “prep work” consisted of dancing to ABBA at a place called Joy in the East Village.
It was actually show tunes night, and they finished out with ABBA.
This openness allowed for spontaneous creation. Buckley would send fever-writing and pictures that became scenes. The night before shooting Will’s return to London after Hamnet’s death, she journaled about birth and loss, imagining Agnes’ skin as fragile shell. The next day, Agnes was peeling eggs on camera.
Crisis in the Final Week
By the last week of filming, everyone was struggling. Zhao had only a loose outline for the final Globe Theatre scene where everything needed to converge.
When they shot it on the fifth-to-last day, panic set in.
Shit. We don’t have a movie.
Buckley felt equally lost, thinking everyone could see her flailing. Mescal had one of his only major on-set disagreements ever when Zhao mentioned in passing that the relationship was over by film’s end.
That’s not the film I’ve been making. I was in a blind panic.
A Song That Changed Everything
Driving home that night, Buckley listened to Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight”—the composer was scoring the film, describing his work as “amniotic fluid” holding the family’s story.
Something clicked.
I recognized that Agnes is trying to hold this pain on her own, and it’s impossible. There’s this weird thing on sets sometimes, where actors and extras must be kept separate. And I thought, ‘I need to surrender to the 300 people that are around me in the scene.’
She texted Zhao a link to the “This Bitter Earth” rendition of Richter’s instrumental used in Shutter Island.
Rewriting the Ending—and Themselves
Zhao was simultaneously ending an important relationship. Listening to Buckley’s song recommendation in the car to set, she felt herself reaching toward the window.
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.
She arrived and announced they’d reshoot the entire ending. O’Farrell was tasked with cutting down Hamlet itself—editing Shakespeare made her feel sick. Crombie’s team frantically poured soil from wheelbarrows to raise the stage floor, allowing Buckley and 300 extras to reach toward each other effectively.
They filmed for four more days with “On the Nature of Daylight” playing on repeat. When they wrapped, Zhao blasted Rihanna’s “We Found Love” and everyone broke into song and dance.
Life Imitating Art in the Most Unexpected Way
The experience fundamentally altered Zhao’s perspective on motherhood.
This experience of making the movie made me feel like I could have children. I think we can forget that women’s intuition, and our wisdom, are so powerful. It’s something I’m really considering now.
For Buckley, the production had been emotionally brutal. She’d spent months struggling with her own desire to become a mother—moments like wearing the prosthetic belly were painful.
I wanted it so badly, and it wasn’t happening, and the enormity of wanting that while making this movie was so much.
She had one final day filming pickup shots alone, crying her eyes out in every room (“none of it was usable,” she laughs). Back in London, she processed everything on a long walk with Mescal along Regent’s Canal.
A week later, she was pregnant.
Sometimes grief doesn’t just transform into art. Sometimes it transforms into life itself—messy, miraculous, and utterly beyond our control.