Film

Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley to star in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet

Irish actors will play William Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway

Paul Mescal will play the role of William Shakespeare in Hamnet, appearing alongside Jessie Buckley as Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway. Photograph: Kate Green/Getty Images

Tue Jan 30 2024 - 16:39

Paul Mescal will star as the young William Shakespeare in a big-screen version of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao.

The film will be scripted by Chiara Atik, adapting Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage play, which has played to sold-out runs in Stratford-upon-Avon and the West End.

Mescal will appear alongside fellow Irish actor Jessie Buckley as Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, called Agnes in the book, which explores the loss of their 11-year-old son to the plague.

Speaking to Vogue to promote his current film, All of Us Strangers, Mescal called the novel “devastating”. “I can’t wait,” he continued. “If I told a younger version of myself that this would be [shooting] this year, I wouldn’t believe it.”

READ MORE

Mescal and Buckley were co-stars in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, but didn’t share screen time. “I think she’s one of our present-day greats,” said Mescal of Buckley.

Jessie Buckley will play Anne Hathaway in Hamnet. Photograph: Damien Eagers/PA Wire

Buckley is shortly to be seen opposite The Lost Daughter’s Olivia Colman in Wicked Little Letters; both she and Mescal are recent Olivier award winners – Buckley for Cabaret and Mescal for A Streetcar Named Desire.

Zhao won multiple Oscars in 2021 for her debut film, Nomadland; her Marvel follow-up, Eternals, was less rapturously received.

“Chloé is somebody I can’t wait to get in the weeds with,” said Mescal, “and get into the heads of those characters.” – Guardian Service

LATEST STORIES