Hamnet, with Chloe Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hamnet, the acclaimed novel by Maggie O’Farrell, is now a major film. The story imagines the life and death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, whose loss would later echo through one of his most famous tragedies, Hamlet. O’Farrell joins director and co-writer Chloé Zhao to reveal how they adapted the novel for the big screen. With Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as William, the film reframes the Shakespeare family story as one of deep love, rupturing grief, and artistic creation. O’Farrell and Zhao discuss developing the screenplay together, interpreting Shakespeare as a husband and father, building the film’s immersive natural world, and shaping an unforgettable Globe Theatre sequence that anchors the emotional arc of the story. O’Farrell and Zhao talk about adaptation, artistry, and how a 400-year-old loss continues to inspire new ways of imagining Shakespeare’s life and legacy. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published December 2, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Hamish Brown in Stirling, Scotland, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:07.8	I'm Farah Kareem Cooper, the Folger director.
0:12.8	Maggie O'Farrell's best-selling novel, Hamnet, came out in 2020 and won the National
0:18.2	Book Critics Circle Award and the Women's Prize for Fiction.
0:23.3	The book told the fictionalized story of the death of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway's son, Hamnet.
0:30.0	And O'Farrell's novel has had a long afterlife.
0:34.1	First, it was adapted into a stage play by Lolita Chakrabarty for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
0:40.3	Now, a film adaptation is coming to theaters.
0:45.3	This version stars Jesse Buckley as Anne, although in O'Farrell's telling, it's pronounced, Anyes.
0:53.3	Paul Meskell is William, and Jacoby Joupe plays Hamnet.
0:59.3	This version of Hamnet was co-written by O'Farrell and the movie's director, Chloe
1:04.0	Zhao. Zhao's 2020 film Nomad Land won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. In 2021, she directed
1:15.4	the Marvel film, The Eternals. Here are Maggie O'Farrell and Chloe Zhao in conversation with
1:23.1	Barbara Bogave. Well, I want to start with you, Maggie. It has been such a run. I mean,
1:29.9	first you had the RSC production and now this film. And I was thinking that your book is so much
1:34.8	about the interior lives of Anne Hathaway or Agnes, as you call her, in the book. It's all about
1:42.8	what goes unspoken. So were you convinced that it would even make a good
1:49.2	play or a film or even be possible to adapt to the stage or screen? Well, I think when I was writing
1:55.5	the novel, it never really occurred to me that it would happen. You know, people have said to me,
1:59.7	oh, is it a dream come true?
2:01.2	And I just have to say, well, I never even thought it was possible.
2:04.4	So not really.
	...

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