Chloé Zhao, director: I was an outsider
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
‘It's so far from your reality because I didn't know anybody and I was an immigrant’
Anita Rani speaks to the Beijing-born director Chloé Zhao about her career and her latest film, Hamnet.
Zhao made history in 2021 when, at the age of just 39, she became the first woman of colour - and, at the time, only the second woman ever - to win the best director award at the Oscars.
Now, just five years after her Oscars triumph for Nomadland, Zhao is making headlines once again as the director of the critically-acclaimed movie Hamnet, a dramatisation about the son of the English playwright William Shakespeare. It won two Golden Globe awards, including one for ‘Best Drama Movie’, and has recently been nominated for 8 Academy Awards too.
Thank you to the Woman’s Hour team for their help in making this programme. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with Indian author Twinkle Khanna, former US Vice President Kamala Harris, and Hollywood legend Sir Anthony Hopkins. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presenter: Anita Rani Producers: Emma Pearce, Ben Cooper and Lucy Sheppard Editor: Justine Lang
Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.
(Image: Chloé Zhao. Credit: Emma McIntyre/WireImage)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.8 | Hello, I'm BBC presenter, Anita Rani, |
| 0:09.1 | and this is the interview from the BBC World Service, |
| 0:12.9 | the best conversations coming out of the BBC, |
| 0:15.7 | people shaping our world from all over the world. |
| 0:20.4 | If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention. |
| 0:25.1 | We have never seen a people so united. |
| 0:28.7 | Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey. |
| 0:31.4 | Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not. |
| 0:35.5 | We're more popular than populism. |
| 0:38.5 | For this interview, I met the Chinese movie director, Chloe Zhao, in London. |
| 0:44.7 | Zhao made history in 2021, when at the age of just 39, she became the first woman of color, and at the time, only the second woman ever to win the Best Director Award at the Oscars. |
| 0:58.0 | Born in Beijing in 1982, her father was a successful steel executive and her stepmother, the well-known Chinese comedy actress Song Dandan. |
| 1:07.6 | Despite speaking little English, Zhao travelled to England to study at the age of 14 in the mid-1990s |
| 1:13.9 | and later moved to the US to study political science in Massachusetts. |
| 1:18.8 | She then enrolled in a graduate film programme in New York in 2010 |
| 1:22.7 | under the artistic direction of the African-American filmmaker Spike Lee. |
| 1:28.1 | Just five years after her Oscar's triumph for Nomad Land, |
| 1:32.1 | Zhao is making headlines once again, |
| 1:34.5 | as the director of the critically acclaimed movie Hamnet, |
| 1:37.8 | a dramatisation about the son of the English playwright William Shakespeare. |
| 1:42.2 | It recently won two Golden Globe Awards, |
... |
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