"What Maggie O'Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare's wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people ... and give them status beside this great man. ... [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman."
"The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness. A mother's tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something's born into the world, you're always in the precipice of life and death."
"I didn't know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn't in the script. I think really [director] Chloe [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. By the time I'd met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet."
Jessie Buckley plays Agnes, William Shakespeare's wife, in the film Hamnet, based on Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel. Buckley was drawn to the role because it challenges the common misconception that Agnes hindered Shakespeare's genius. O'Farrell's adaptation gives Agnes and their son Hamnet equal narrative weight and humanity alongside the famous playwright. The film explores Agnes as a woman connected to nature who navigates marital conflict and the tragedy of losing her son. Buckley discovered she was pregnant shortly after filming concluded and has since become a mother herself. She reflects on how the story's themes of maternal tenderness and the profound stakes of birth and death resonated with her personal journey into motherhood.
#shakespeares-wife-agnes #maternal-themes #character-depth-and-agency #film-adaptation #grief-and-loss
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