Jessie Buckley loves the ‘shadowy bits’ of her characters

Public media is no longer federally funded, but the NPR network remains yours in service to and powered by you. Keep public media public with a donation today at donate.npr.org and thank you. This is Fresh Air. I am Terry Gross. The film Hamnet is nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Actress for my guest Jessie Buckley.

Hamnet's other nominations include Best picture, best director for Chloe Zhao, who's also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, along with Maggie O'Farrell, the author of the novel Hamnet, which the film is based on, Buckley plays William Shakespeare's wife, Anyas Hathaway. Little is known about Shakespeare's real wife, the film is largely an imagined version of her. What's true is that the couple's son, Hamnet, died at age eleven from the plague. In the film he catches it from his twin sister.

Shakespeare has already left the couple's home in the country to go to London and work on writing and staging his plays, and has promised to bring the rest of the family as soon as he settled and has a little more money. When Hamnet gets sick, and it's clear his life is in jeopardy, Anyas calls for her husband to come home, but he doesn't make it in time. Shakespeare and Hamlet don't get to say goodbye, and Agnes is left to experience the horror of her son's death without her husband. In this scene, when Shakespeare does return, she's angry that he came too late, but she also feels guilty that she didn't pay enough attention to Hamlet while she was caring for their daughter who survived the plague. Shakespeare is played by Paul Meskell.

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