
Zhao, a previous Oscar winner, for Best Director, discusses her acclaimed film with Michael Schulman.
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this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.
David Remnick
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Chloe Zhao was only the second woman to win an Oscar for Best Director, and that, of course, was for Nomadland, the 2020 film starring Frances McDormand. And as an itinerant worker living out of a camper and searching for work all over America, Zhao is up for best Director yet again. And the film Hamnet, on the surface, is very different from her previous work. It takes place in England in the 16th century, where a young William Shakespeare and his wife Anne have to cope with the loss of their son. The film is based on a novel by Maggie o', Farrell and Hamnet is nominated for Best Picture along with Best Actress for Jessie Buckley and five other aw. Chloe Zhao talked about Hamnet when the film first came out with staff writer Michael Shulman.
Michael Shulman
So how did this book and how did this project make its way to you?
Chloe Zhao
I was driving through New Mexico to Telluride Film Festival, and then that's when Amberlynn called me and told me about this project.
Michael Shulman
Amblynn, meaning Amblyn Spielberg's. Spielberg's production company.
Chloe Zhao
And when they said it over the phone, you know, the reception, if you haven't been to the Four Corners, not great. So it's in and out. And they're saying, you know, it's about Shakespeare's wife and the death of their son. And I just thought, there's so many things in that sentence that I have no personal connection to. So I said no. And then a few hours later, I met Paul Metzger for the first time. I didn't know who he was because I had not seen normal people. His career has changed a lot in a short amount of time.
Michael Shulman
Yes.
Chloe Zhao
But I sat next to the creek with him and I just felt something about him. You know, there's something about him. There's a simmering discomfort in him. Like an animal, you know, like a Steppenwolf, just want to burst out. And that's why he creates. So the energy was really strong. And he's talking about. Oh, I asked him, would you ever consider playing young Shakespeare? And he said, wait, are you talking about Hamnet? I love the book so much. You have to read the book. It's not what you think it is. Please read the book.
Michael Shulman
So what about the book, when you read it, made you feel like you were the right person to do it? Were there details in the novel that. That really spoke to you?
Chloe Zhao
When I read the book, I thought the internal landscape was so beautifully described. That is my. That usually I have to really get to know, say, Brady from the writer. I have to get to know him for such a long period of time. Would I understand his internal landscape so then I can externalize it on screen so the audience isn't just relying on him verbally. Right. But Maggie already done that work for all the characters. So I thought that's my blueprint, you know? And also, there's a rhythm to the way she writes, has a heartbeat to it that is very similar to mine. I found out later that her favorite filmmaker is Wong Kar Wai, which is the person whose work that made me want to make films many, many years ago. So there is that similarity as well.
Michael Shulman
I mean, there's also an external landscape in the film that is so vivid. And you're a filmmaker who shoots the natural world beautifully. Anyone who's seen your first three features were all or in part set in the American west and South Dakota specifically. Hamnet is set in Elizabeth in England, and you shot in Wales and Herefordshire. I'm curious about what you got from that very different kind of natural Landscape. As you were thinking about the film,
Chloe Zhao
the natural world, the reason why it has been such a big part of every film I've done is because
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I
Chloe Zhao
can now, in my 40s, look back at my career and say, the reason why that is is because I have always had a deep fear of death. And I think that drives my creativity. And when you are afraid to die, you are actually not able to live fully. And I know that deep inside at night, when the light goes off, you know, phone shuts off, I'm lying there, I know I'm not living my life fully. And it's because I'm so terrified. I don't feel safe in this world. And also my instinctual human self knows that when you go into nature, if you have a relationship with nature, then you develop a very embodied spirituality that is not relied on anyone else telling you. Right? It's an embodied safety that you feel within oneness and that you can only find in nature when you become one with your surroundings. That's all of our great prophets goes into nature to come back with the message for a reason. And so I just knew that's part of working on my own shit
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to
Chloe Zhao
get myself into nature. And the second part of to answer that question is that in my 30s, I was much more like a pioneer, like going west, going into, like, finding treasures. I wanted to go as wide as possible, chasing horizon after horizon so I can come back with the treasures. The camera's insatiable. It wants to capture everything. And I want to move. I'm always on the move. And then in my 40s, after midlife crisis, I realized that I can't keep running from myself. And in the forest, it's the opposite of the plains. And the forest is deeply feminine and it makes you stay still. And when you stay still, you have nowhere to go but into the underworld and into yourself, where all your shadows are. So I Knew in my 40s, this is the right place, right kind of nature for me to dive deep in. And when it comes to the forest in Wales, in terms of inspiration, when I first visited that forest with my cinematographer, Lukash, we wanted to go to find the language for the film or just let the forest tell us what the film is about beyond what we read in the book. So nature, we consider nature. An hod, a department head, is constantly working with this.
Michael Shulman
So one of your main characters is William Shakespeare. I know the William Shakespeare played beautifully by Paul Meskel. And you know, this is not the witty hyperverbal Shakespeare of Shakespeare. Love. He's actually a man of pretty few words. He's brooding, he's frustrated. As you and Maggie were writing the screenplay, how did you approach just the challenge of writing lines for William Shakespeare?
Chloe Zhao
I think the reason why the producers and also Maggie chose me is because I don't feel that way about William Shakespeare. I don't have the same reverence. I do have reverence intellectually, but I don't have the burden on my shoulders as many people in the west do. Maybe the same as I am with, you know, cowboys or Westerns. Right. I watched only 2 1/2 Westerns when I made the Writer. So. But I watched more afterwards because I fell in love with it and it's the same. I'm probably going to be doing more Shakespeare related things after this. But I didn't come feeling that he's any different than a man who fell in love with a woman and couldn't quite express his feelings. So I never. The pressure is on the actors. It's on Paul, who does have a lot of reverence in the sense that not only will we put him through not only playing William Shakespeare, but also telling the story of Orpheus, Eurydice as William Shakespeare. So that. And to answer your question, he's very different than in the book. Actually, Maggie reminded me a couple weeks ago when she was here, she's like, do you remember that? You see in the book he's quite talkative, he's expressive, you know, an actor. And I guess that was me. I guess I made a decision to change his character because I find a lot of artists, male artists get into expressing themselves in their arts because they never felt safe to express their emotions in real life, in our society. What are you looking at?
Michael Shulman
You.
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Why?
Chloe Zhao
I thought you were a man of words. Master tutorial as a little boy, they're told to toughen up or you know, there's no space for your emotions because mom is crying, you know, my sister is crying. So I was raised by a man like that. I've loved and beloved by men like that my whole life. So it just became natural for me. And Paul as well was part of that decision as well. Like watching him. There's him in this character as well. And I can only work that way because moment by moment I need to feel love towards this character and I need to feel like I understand him. And there's a part of me that is like him. I feel safe in my fantasy world on set. Then I can deal with emotional situations in life. So Paul was under a lot of pressure because we don't talk about who this character is. We start shooting and find him. So that's day three when we did the Orpheus scene, you know, scene where he goes, I don't. Talking to people is difficult for me. And then she said, tell me a story. We did that whole thing on day three. And many, many takes. Usually I don't do that many takes just for him to find who is William Shakespeare speaking? One of the greatest myths to a woman he fall in love with. Very loaded.
Michael Shulman
Yes. And then at one point he actually bursts forth with the to be or not to be speech.
Chloe Zhao
That's also pressure on Paul.
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Yes.
Michael Shulman
So I know you went to school in England as a teenager. Were you taught Shakespeare there? Was that your first encounter with sort of his actual text?
Chloe Zhao
Well, I didn't speak English. So when you don't speak English and you have Romeo and Juliet in front of you in the equivalence of a ninth grade. Still, when I was on set of Hamnet, when Paul was delivering his speech, I only understand a third of it technically because I just don't understand what those words mean. But at the beginning, Paul has said to me, look, I can study it and translate every word and understand what it all means. But Poe said to me, listen, if Shakespeare is performed right, you don't have to understand what they're saying. You feel it in the body. The language is written like that. And so in a way, me and Lukasz, who also doesn't speak much English, we sat there and we watched Paul's performance. And in a way we kind of embody Agnes, who doesn't quite understand everything, but we feel it. So in those days in the Globe, I'm judging by me and Lukas, physical reaction, we start crying or we go, oh, you know, our heart, like our throat is tight, our stomach turns, then we know it's the right take. We didn't even have to understand every word, which is really magical. It's making me think about Shakespeare. Completely different.
David Remnick
Director Chloe Zhao speaking with Michael Shulman. More in a moment.
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radiohour this is Ira Glass of this American Life. Do you know our show? Okay, well, either way, I'm going to tell you about it. We make stories, old fashioned stories that hopefully pull you in at the beginning with funny moments and feelings and people in surprising situations. And then you just want to find out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening. That's right. I'm talking about stories that make you miss appointments and ignore your loved ones. This is American Life. Every week, wherever you get your podcasts,
Michael Shulman
I believe you just wrapped directing the pilot of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer revival. So you're back working on a franchise with a very intense fandom, which I'm
Chloe Zhao
also one of them.
Michael Shulman
Sure, that helps. But I'm curious, as you move forward in your career, how do you see your relationship with the franchise driven part of Hollywood? You know, I think it, from what I can tell, it's only getting harder and harder to make a movie that isn't based on something connected to some form of ip. And yet you've done both. You're continuing to do both. I mean you could call Hamnet and William Shakespeare IP in some way, but you know, it's a, I thought about
Chloe Zhao
his sellability when I signed up both Maggie's book and him. It's a pretty strong IP we're dealing with here. Right.
Michael Shulman
So how do you see yourself fitting into the industry that is now so IP driven?
Chloe Zhao
Why do you think that is?
Michael Shulman
Because people want safe bets. It's hard to make money.
Chloe Zhao
Yeah.
Michael Shulman
On a film.
Chloe Zhao
Yeah. You know, I just launched, we just made announcement, me and my producing partner Nick Ganda, we, we teamed up with Kodansha, which is the oldest and one of the largest manga well publishing house in Japan. And they have everything from Akira to Ghost in the Shell to Attack on Titan, you know, their Sailor Moon. We just teamed up with them to launch Kodansha Studios, which means that we will be developing live action adaptations of their IP in house before it goes to the studios.
Michael Shulman
Tell me more about manga.
Chloe Zhao
Manga is quite different than western comics, particularly American comics. Manga is heavily influenced by Shintoism, Japanese Shintoism. And if you don't know what that is, it's believing that every object has a spirit.
Michael Shulman
Right.
Chloe Zhao
Like this glass has a spirit within itself. There has been quite complicated relationship between studios licensing Japanese ip and it's particularly manga ip. And the adaptation process has been quite complicated for years and years and years now. So I've always dreamt to be a bridge between the east and the west and to be able to create a safe and nurturing garden in a way for international filmmakers, writer directors and Japanese senseis, manga artists, authors, to come together and to at early stage, allow the artists to really see each other. Like, why did this artist create this story in Japan? You know, what is really the core of it? And then spiritually, emotionally, and then to find the right filmmaker and then can allow them to work together to develop the screenplay until the little, you know, the shoots of the plants are strong enough. And then we go to our studio partners. I think that's, I guess, one of my place in the IP world. I think adapting from IP is beautiful. I started my writing career as a fan fiction writer.
Michael Shulman
Oh, really?
Chloe Zhao
In China. A pretty well known one too. But you never know because I will never share with you my pen name, but I don't mind. I think the word original is misunderstood in modern world because origo means the source. It means old, the beginning. So original actually means going back to the source. Yeah, but our modern culture is so obsessed with new things. Must have new things. It's a very masculine dominated way of looking at the world. Must have new things all the time. But nature, everything goes back to the source. So I don't mind working with ip, it's just how we do it. Needs to be, I think, could be healthier, more wholesome. Yeah.
Michael Shulman
The last thing I want to ask you about is you've described yourself as deeply neurodivergent and you've talked about how you become overstimulated and kind of shut down. You know, a director on a set has to deal with so much, so many people, departments, questions, images. So how does that challenge you on a movie set? And how does it help you on a movie set?
Chloe Zhao
Good question. See, I didn't know. You know, I didn't have my official diagnosis until this year. So in the past I always wondered, maybe I'm just billed wrong. Something is off with me. And I mean, going to premieres or press days, you know, promoting the film is even harder because the amount of exposure, you know, going to an awards show or things like that. And so I feel a lot of shame around why can't I enjoy it? You know, like the people around me could be. And then once I have some language around it, it's very empowering. I go, okay, so the fact that I'm good at some things, right. Is my sensitivity, my intuition, my ability to process information, my pattern recognizing skills. I can watch people and find patterns and then I can pretty much predict what they're going to do in a scene. Right. All those things I understand is because my brain takes in so much more information than the person next to me. So I need time to process that information. And if I don't process it and more are coming in, then I could shut down and implode or just have massive, you know, meltdowns. So since then. And also a really strong perfume gave me a shutdown.
Michael Shulman
Really?
Chloe Zhao
Yeah. If someone's wearing if going through the airport, you know, that's tough.
Michael Shulman
Okay, so you won't be working in Smell o Vision.
Chloe Zhao
No, but I love, you know, anything with that's natural from the natural world is fine. It's the chemical in the perfume that is overwhelming. Like cleaning products, air fresheners, things like that.
Michael Shulman
Well, you are very likely headed on the road to the Academy Awards again. So I hope that no one is wearing very strong perfume at them.
Chloe Zhao
Well, that's lost cause. This is okay.
Michael Shulman
And congratulations on Hamnet.
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Thank you.
Michael Shulman
Really beautiful movie.
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Thank you.
David Remnick
Chloe Xiao's Hamnet is nominated for eight Academy Awards and Michael Shulman will be in LA covering the Oscars just as he has for many years before. And you can always read him@newyorker.com and you can also subscribe to the New Yorker there as well. New yorker.com I'm David Remnick. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. See you next time.
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Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Episode: Chloé Zhao on “Hamnet,” Which Is Nominated for Eight Academy Awards
Date: March 15, 2026
Host: Michael Shulman (for this episode)
Guest: Chloé Zhao
This episode features an in-depth interview with acclaimed director Chloé Zhao, whose latest film “Hamnet” has received eight Academy Award nominations. The film, based on Maggie O'Farrell’s novel, explores the life of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway as they endure the tragic loss of their son. Zhao discusses her creative process, her unique connection to the project, her approach to adaptation and natural environments, and her experiences as a neurodivergent filmmaker navigating Hollywood.
"I just thought, there's so many things in that sentence that I have no personal connection to. So I said no." – Chloé Zhao [02:51]
“There's a simmering discomfort in him. Like an animal, you know, like a Steppenwolf, just want to burst out. And that's why he creates.” – Chloé Zhao [03:27] “I asked him, would you ever consider playing young Shakespeare? And he said, wait, are you talking about Hamnet? I love the book so much. You have to read the book.” – Chloé Zhao [03:38]
“The internal landscape was so beautifully described…Maggie already done that work for all the characters. So I thought that’s my blueprint, you know?” – Chloé Zhao [04:15]
“I have always had a deep fear of death. And I think that drives my creativity…if you have a relationship with nature, then you develop a very embodied spirituality...” – Chloé Zhao [06:01]
“In the forest, it’s the opposite of the plains. And the forest is deeply feminine and it makes you stay still. And when you stay still, you have nowhere to go but into the underworld and into yourself...” – Chloé Zhao [07:13] “We consider nature a department head, is constantly working with us.” – Chloé Zhao [08:05]
Portraying William Shakespeare ([08:49-12:54]):
“A lot of artists, male artists get into expressing themselves in their arts because they never felt safe to express their emotions in real life… I was raised by a man like that. I’ve loved and been loved by men like that my whole life.” – Chloé Zhao [11:23]
“To be or not to be” Scene ([12:54]):
“That’s also pressure on Paul.” – Chloé Zhao [12:59]
“Paul has said to me…if Shakespeare is performed right, you don’t have to understand what they’re saying. You feel it in the body. The language is written like that.” – Chloé Zhao [13:38] “In a way we kind of embody Agnes, who doesn’t quite understand everything, but we feel it.” – Chloé Zhao [14:15]
“We just teamed up with them to launch Kodansha Studios, which means that we will be developing live action adaptations of their IP in house before it goes to the studios.” – Chloé Zhao [17:49]
“Manga is heavily influenced by Shintoism… believing that every object has a spirit.” – Chloé Zhao [18:28]
“I’ve always dreamt to be a bridge between the east and the west…to create a safe and nurturing garden…allow the artists to really see each other.” – Chloé Zhao [19:12]
“I started my writing career as a fan fiction writer in China. A pretty well-known one too. But you never know because I will never share with you my pen name.” – Chloé Zhao [20:14]
“The word original is misunderstood…origo means the source…So original actually means going back to the source.” – Chloé Zhao [20:32] “I don’t mind working with IP, it’s just how we do it. Needs to be healthier, more wholesome.” – Chloé Zhao [20:59]
“I didn’t have my official diagnosis until this year. So in the past I always wondered, maybe I’m just built wrong.” – Chloé Zhao [21:36] “I feel a lot of shame around why can’t I enjoy it…then once I have some language around it, it’s very empowering.” – Chloé Zhao [21:53]
“A really strong perfume gave me a shutdown.” – Chloé Zhao [23:11]
Chloé Zhao’s conversation provides a candid view into her distinct artistic philosophy, her evolution as a filmmaker, and her navigation of mainstream and adapted storytelling. Through “Hamnet,” Zhao continues to blend natural beauty, emotional truth, and a refreshingly personal lens on both history and contemporary creative challenges.