“I think everyone, I’m sure some of you, feels that tightness in the chest. It’s unfortunate in our society that tightness just stays there. It doesn’t have a place to be expressed,” said Chloe Zhao, the co-writer, director, and producer of the new Hamnet, during a Q&A at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Zhao was joined on stage by stars Jessie Buckley, Emily Watson and brothers Jacobi and Noah Jupe as they covered topics about grief, channeling emotions, and the importance of dance takes in the film.
Hamnet focuses on Shakespeare’s wife Agnes and the death of their young son, Hamnet. It’s based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell. By the second half, much of the audience was in tears.
“Chloe asked me to step into this river, and the tenderness (of the character) was the thing that hit me like a tsunami the most and just changed me forever,” said Buckley, who plays the pivotal role of Agnes Shakespeare.
She tackles demanding scene after demanding scene, and credited Zhao with giving her the space to do so.
“We have a fearless leader in Chloe Zhao who consciously creates a world and an energy for us to step in and also contain the biggest and hardest parts of where we have to go. So on the days when we had to go there, it felt very safe. It felt like the potential to touch the deepest parts and begin looking down the bottom of the ocean were given the care to come to the surface,” said Watson, who has played a grieving mother herself in Angela’s Ashes and A Song for Jenny,
“Chloe invited us on a journey which was just honest, and asked us to take a journey inside ourselves. I had a lot of connectivity with Shakespeare already. I think I stopped the show at RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company), laughing so much… my first job was at the RSC. I met my husband. My husband, his family, are from Stratford-upon-Avon. I have a lot of connections there. This was a very profound experience for me.”
Shakespeare’s work and words as an emotional vessel was an idea that Zhao and the cast hoped would resonate with audiences as well.
Chloe Zhao and Jessie Buckley on Hamnet
“I don’t know where grief ends and where grief begins, or like love ends and love begins. And we all dance in the precipice of life and death every day. And to love somebody is to learn to let them go truly. And I think all you need is a big fat container, either with Chloe Zhao or William Shakespeare, to be able to reach the limits of what is possible,” said Buckley.
What does one do with emotions as big as grief, regret, or heartache?
“Dance,” said Zhao. She elaborated: “At the end of each week, we do something called dance takes, especially in really difficult scenes, like, for example, the scene where Hamnet died.”
Actor Jacobi Jupe, who plays the titular role, eagerly jumped in: “I said to Chloe, because it wasn’t a Friday, so it wasn’t the end of the week, I said, Can we just do a bonus dance? Can we do ‘Staying Alive’?”
She agreed. But there is more than Jupe’s proclivity for the Bee Gees that made the therapeutic dance takes so important for Zhao’s actors, and crew, to process their emotions during filming. “I think the restriction of the body that has happened to all of us for thousands and thousands of years has allowed people to control our grief. So I could encourage more dancing, more punching pillows.”
Hamnet had its Canadian premiere at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival and will be in theaters in November, 2025.
Main image: Hamnet. Focus Features.