Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley walked the red carpet of the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin on Saturday evening for the Irish premiere of Hamnet.
The “cruelly raw” film is Chloé Zhao’s cinematic adaptation of the book Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O’Farrell. It will be released in Irish cinemas in January.
O’Farrell, who was born in Derry, said it was “absolutely thrilling” to be in Dublin for the premiere. She is proud of Buckley and Mescal’s rendition of her characters. “I think rightly they are getting the recognition they deserve,” she said.
Buckley and Mescal were both nominated for Golden Globes for their roles as Agnes Hathaway and William Shakespeare.
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Hamnet tells the story of Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway – who is named Agnes in the film – and the aftermath of the death of the couple’s young son.
“The thing that struck me so much was that this was a woman who was deeply embodied, was so connected to nature and her own elemental, natural force. She’s a woman with a strong, wide open heart and a mother with an epic landscape inside her,” said Buckley.
Mescal is most admiring of Shakespeare’s life as a family man in Hamnet: “I find it incredibly inspiring how ambitious he is in terms of his feelings, and how he invests in his love with Agnes. It’s kind of warm but unrelenting in a way. There’s a real confidence in the way he expresses things. And I think that that requires a lot of bravery,” he said.
Will he take those attributes with him going forward? “I certainly hope so,” he said with a laugh.
The death of the couple’s child, Hamnet, is believed to have inspired Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
In a rare five-star film review, Irish Times critic Donald Clarke wrote that far from being “grief porn”, the film artfully balances cataclysmic grief with “intense dignity”.
O’Farrell described this storyline as an explanation of “where art comes from and why we need it”.
“Agnes for me contained unbelievable strength, and an unbelievable ferocious tenderness and I loved living and loving and grieving in that space,” said Buckley.
Newly a mother herself, Buckley said she believes “mothers contain multitudes”. “I’m always curious about revealing the depths of a woman and a mother that haven’t been seen yet.”
“I have no process. I’m not really interested in acting at all, I want to be in a place of being ... I want to be absolutely inside the body and unconscious mind of the people that I’m playing, so that I can learn something that I didn’t know about the world.”
Buckley and Mescal said the film touches on such elemental human things that everyone will take something from it. “This film reminded me of what it is to be a storyteller and the journey you can take,” said Buckley.
The pair are relaxed about portraying the life of a character who is also a monumental figure in theatre: “I like being his wife and his mistress,” Buckley summed it up, leaving Mescal stumped for words.
