Filmmaker Chloé Zhao has returned with her fifth feature film, “Hamnet,” a tragedy based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 bestselling novel, but the movie traces its origins to a meeting at a film festival between Zhao and her lead actor for the movie, Paul Mescal.
In a conversation with TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman at TIFF 2025, Zhao said she had been approached by Amblin Partners to adapt “Hamnet,” a bestselling novel and tragedy based on the real-life death of William Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, at the age of 11. While she was considering it, she was convinced by Mescal to take the project when they met at the Telluride Film Festival.
“I met with him by the creek. I was looking at him talking…it’s a little bit like when I met Brady, the cowboy from ‘The Rider,’” said Zhao, referring to her 2018 film in which real-life former rodeo rider Brady Jandreau starred as a cowboy who can never ride horses again due to a serious brain injury that leaves him vulnerable to seizures.
It was Mescal who convinced her to read Maggie O’Farrell’s book, and as she did, she imagined Mescal and Jessie Buckley starring in the film as Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes. Before Zhao even wrote the script, she had the two actors do chemistry tests using scenes improvised from the book, and her instincts were confirmed.
After winning over critics with “The Rider,” Zhao became the second woman to win the Best Director Oscar with “Nomadland,” which also won Best Picture, before taking a jump into blockbuster filmmaking with the Marvel film “Eternals.” With “Hamnet,” Zhao said she needed to take on something completely new, and not just because of the subject matter.
“With the first four films, I chased a lot of sunsets, lots of horizons. I went far and wide, and I knew at midlife, with a lot of things that was going on in my own life, I needed to descend,” she said. “I needed to have one stage, one room, one family, and there’s no sunsets in ‘Hamnet.’ I needed that kind of depth in my own life. So making the film was exhilarating because of that.”
“Hamnet” also gave Zhao a new perspective on “Hamlet,” Shakespeare’s legendary play, thanks to O’Farrell’s story which suggests that the Bard’s famous tragic tale about mortality came from a personal place.
“The discomfort of impermanence makes so many of us afraid to live and to love and to feel. I think Shakespeare was definitely touching on that in a really deep level in ‘Hamlet,’ and Maggie assumed the name resemblance and the timing the death of his son must have some influence on this and his attempt to try to make sense of impermanence,” she said.
“Hamnet” will be released by Focus Features on Thanksgiving weekend.
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