B (22:01)

Thank you. It's very nice to meet you.

A (22:03)

And congratulations on your new Oscar nomination for best overall screenplay with director Chloe Zhao. And for Hamnet's, I believe it was eight nominations over.

B (22:12)

That's right. I know it's very exciting. It's not something very surreal, it's not something I ever thought would happen to me, but I'm just enjoying the ride. It's a bit of a wild ride.

A (22:20)

I hope you enjoy deciding what to wear to the ceremony.

B (22:23)

There's a lot of discussion about that among me and my friends and my teenage daughters. There's a lot of photographs back and forth. I keep pulling the leg of my teenage daughters, telling them I'm going to wear Bjork's swan dress, which they're so funny. Anything that makes, you know, you never know.

A (22:39)

Anything that makes an adult's work fun to discuss with teenagers. I feel like you're doing something right.

B (22:43)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

A (22:45)

Maggie, your body of work is primarily novels. Did you ever imagine screenwriting was in the cards?

B (22:50)

Not really. It was. I hadn't really ruled it out. It just wasn't something that had presented itself to me. But when I heard that Chloe Zhao was interested in making an adaptation of Hamnet, I was really pleased because I knew that from Chloe's work, you know, I'd seen all her films, that she was never going to make it into a kind of conventional costume drama, which I never wanted any adaptation of Hamlet to be. But I was initially hesitant about co writing the screenplay just because I. I'd never done it before. And also I'd kind of moved on to other projects and I thought, you know, I don't really. But Chloe's very persuasive and very impassioned and she wasn't at all what I expected. On the first ever Zoom call I had with her, I was expecting a very sort of. I don't know when you have a Zoom call with a Oscar winning film Director, you. I was expecting a kind of, I don't know, Beverly Hills mansion in the background, a butler, you know, gold door handles, but not at all. Chloe was kind of had salty, wet hair because she'd been surfing and she was wearing a hoodie, and there were just lots of dogs in the background. So I thought. I said, maybe this is my kind of person. Maybe I could. Maybe I could work with her. So I'm really glad I changed my mind and said yes.

A (23:57)

Aside from the salty surfing hair, what about her vision for a hamnet persuaded you to join her on this project? It's fascinating to hear how talented creators decide which projects they care about enough to devote entire years of their lives to. What did Chloe say and how did you know this film was such a project for you?

B (24:13)

What she said in the first ever meeting we had was that she wanted to make the film a bat. And yes, because I was always wary, I think, when I was talking about the screen adaptation, was that the kind of magnetic pull of wanting to make it more about Shakespeare, to make, obviously put him front and center. And while obviously I love Shakespeare and I love other films and stories about him, I really wanted this to retain its sense of focusing on his family, you know, his wife and his children. And so I was wary about other film directors who said, yeah, I want to make this film, but actually I'm going to completely change it. It's going to be a narrat about him. But Chloe said instantly, it's got to be about Agnes. You know, it's her story, her. It'll be her emotional landscape. So I was very taken with that. Chloe also brandished. She held up a brandished copy of the novel and said, I want to make this. I want to make this. So I thought, oh, okay, why not? I mean, I think. I think my thinking was I'll just partly. Also, I think you should challenge yourself to do new things, you know, always through life. You should always try and put yourself out of your comfort zone and think, well, yeah, I love. I mean, I love writing novels and I always will, but at the same time, why not give this a whirl? You know, it would be interesting. And also the idea of collaborating is quite interesting. You know, as a novelist, novelists are very much lone wolves. You know, we live quite solitary lives, I mean, obviously apart from my friends and family, but. And I like that. Don't get me wrong. But I thought actually maybe it would be really interesting to collaborate with lots of different people. People on this project.

A (25:49)

Yes, you are anticipating What I'm so curious about, I imagine that writing novels is a solitary endeavor at times, but your creative collaboration, and I'm just gleaning this from, like you did, a delightful conversation with the New York Times. I'm not part of that WhatsApp thread, but your collab seems to have an entirely different energy. Would you reflect on the contrast and what that felt like for you creatively?

B (26:15)

I think Chloe and I are very different in a lot of ways. You know, we're different ages, different backgrounds, and I think our skills are very different, but really compatible in a way. You know, Chloe. And there was always a point at which, I mean, Chloe came, obviously. I mean, it goes without saying that Chloe's got an awful lot of experience about putting together a narrative for the screen. It doesn't really need to be said, but she came to the project initially with a very clear idea of what she. I think, in a sense, how she wanted to disassemble the novel and reassemble it for the screen. Because there's an awful lot of ground you have to cover, really. Because, I mean, the book is, I don't know, whatever, 360 pages. And obviously one of the first tasks is you've got to strip it right back, strip it down, because the screenplay's 90 pages or so. So that's one of the. You know. But she had a very. She had a very strong sense of which strands of the book she wanted to retain and which we had to lose in order to make a film out of it, which was very useful to me because obviously my sense of the narrative was how I wrote it as a novel. So I think that was a huge help to me when we were writing the first draft. And in a way, I think I was able to say, yes, but if we remove this thread several beats down the narrative, this character's motivation is no longer clear. So it was a question, I think, at that point, of cutting back and also rebalancing the narrative so it all made sense to. To the new version.

A (27:42)

What had to remain, from your joint point of view?

B (27:47)

Well, obviously, the idea that Hamnet died, Hamnet dying halfway through, was retained, the structure, because obviously in the novel, the novel, the first half of the novel is not particularly chronological. It goes back and forth in time between the day that Hamnet and Judith get ill and Agnies and Will meeting for the first time. And I think you can ask a reader on the page to make those jumps with you, those temporal jumps. But on the screen, any kind of flashback can be quite Jarring. So I think we both agreed that we needed to unravel that chronology and make it chronological. But I think, I mean, essentially, I think the film, apart from that one, sort of the flashbacks in the first half of the film, the structure of the film in terms of its temporal arrangement is the same. Hamlet died. Hope this isn't a spoiler. Hamlet dies halfway through. And then the second half is about, you know, how the family recover, how the family deal with his loss. And it covers. And in a sense, either the structure, I mean, I think the beating heart and the structure of the book is exactly there in the film, but I mean, they are slightly different. I think of the film as a non identical twin to the book, which is exactly as it should be.

A (29:02)

Ooh, I'm so glad you mentioned that. We are accustomed to seeing our favorite novels used as IP for films. And they're not interchangeable. It's not. You experience the story in one medium or the other. Would you say more about how you think about them as companion pieces? Like what is their relationship with each other?

B (29:20)

I think as the novelist, you have to go into the project knowing and embracing the idea that it is going to be different and it should be. You know, you couldn't and shouldn't make a film that's a replica of a book because a book already exists. And you can't do it because, you know, a person sitting in an armchair reading a book is interacting with the narrative on the page in a completely different way than an audience in a cinema watching something on screen. So I think it's all right and good that any film version will sit alongside the book. And also, you know, I mean, going back to a kind of familial metaphor, the book is always is my baby and always will be. You know, I made it exactly as I wanted it to be in every word. I kind of carefully edited and re edited. It's exactly the way I personally wanted it. But the film is. I mean, it's Chloe's vision, you know, of that story. And that's absolutely right because it's her film, she's the director. But it's also, I think, you know, I learned a huge amount, I think, about narrative for the screen. And I think the first lesson I learned was economy in that, you know, my natural instinct as a novelist when I was writing a scene was to write, you know, interior, a house. And then I would want to say the house is, you know, on a busy main street. It has this, it has that. The people inside it are wearing this, and they're feeling this because that was my. That's the way I'm kind of trained. But I would look at the version that Chloe had written of the same scene and she just wrote interior house straight into the dialogue. And I think, oh, okay, all that descriptive, all those lovely adjectives that I've chosen carefully. I need to save all that for my novels because actually what I learned when I was on set and I saw this, because screenplays do look very kind of bare in a sense, especially to somebody who, like me, is used to working in fiction. But then when you go on set, this very, very alchemical and magical thing happens where you realize that actually. So I think I learned economy in that way, but I also learned a huge amount of trust. Because you realize that on set you have to trust all your collaborators with all that nuance and detail that you've had to take out of the book. So you rely on the person who's done the set design. You rely on the cinematographer, the lighting people, the costume people, the actors, of course, who can put all the emotion and nuance back into those words and inflections and expressions. And so I remember my first day on set. I was wearing the headphones and I kind of thought, ah, okay, I see it, I see it. All that stuff that you have in a novel, which we took out for the screenplay, has all been put back in, in this new form.

A (31:51)

Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that element of trust because it sounds exciting and wonderful and also a little nerve wracking to be learning on the job with your, your baby, this novel that you, you created.

B (32:03)

I think it's always good for us to be learning new things. I mean, I'm whatever I am. 53, 54. And how brilliant that I'm still. I learned, you know, I've been able to learn this new, this new element towards life and a new way of thinking and a new way of writing. It's, you know, that's irreplaceable, really. I think that's what keeps you. Keeps us all ticking over, doesn't it? Learning new things.

A (32:23)

I hope so. Your writing is so gorgeously lush and it has all those texture, textural elements and details where you can picture the house exactly because you give as many paragraphs in order to do so. Hamnet, the film felt right to me because from the opening scene in this visual medium, the imagery was so gorgeous and powerful and evocative. Would you speak to working in this visual medium?

B (32:48)

Yes. Well, I can't take any credit at all for how beautiful the film looks. That is all down to the big Hamnet film family. But I think it was very. You know, I look at the. The interiors that were put together by, you know, Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton, and I see Margotia's costumes and the lighting and Luke Ash's cinematography and Chloe's direction. And I. I can see that there is a strong sort of strand of DNA in all that way from the book to. To the film. And they've. They've taken it all and run with it and done their own idiosyncratic version of it. But it's. I mean, it's so beautiful. Every shot, especially the interiors, just look like a Dutch master's painting. You know, it's. It's just perfect. And you can almost smell. You can smell the 16th century, can't you, when you see those interiors?

A (33:37)

It's gorgeous. Would you say more about being on set, about the experience of watching your novel come to life? That does, again, sound like such a contrast to. I don't know where you sit when you typically write, but I imagine it's not with a Tudor house in your field of vision.

B (33:53)

I wish. No, I sit right at the moment. I'm sitting in my son's bedroom. My son's away at university and his room's got really good connectivity, so I often come in here and usually I write. I've got a kind of studio in the garden, so I write down there. And it was an old greenhouse which fell down quite recently in a storm, so I had it rebuilt. So it's all. But it's. Yeah, it's fine. But I rebuilt it. But I'd say I rebuilt. I mean, don't get me wrong, I wasn't out there with concrete on my hands, but. No, but being on a film set was. I mean, it's really strange. It was as if my kind of brain was split in two because half of me was. I mean, you know, as I said, you know, a novelist, life is quite solitary, and you spend a lot of time at home talking to your imaginary friends. And being on film set for me, was incredibly interesting. You know, as a novelist, I'm always really interested in. To hear people talk about their jobs and what they do, no matter what it is, it's fascinating. And so I would look around and I think, oh, my goodness, there's somebody putting together a lighting rig and there's somebody sewing an Elizabethan ruff. And here's somebody else who's, you know, dyeing cloth to make it look as though it's been worn in. And, you know, there's the animal handler holding a hawk on his arm. I mean, it's just so, so interesting, all of it. And then I'd be sitting in the tent and I'd have the headphones on, and I'd be watching, you know, a take, and somebody would say something and I'd think, oh, yeah, I wrote it. Oh, yeah, this is. And you'd kind of. Because part of me would kind of forget that actually this was Hamnet, a film of a novel I wrote. And then something would remind me and I'd think, oh, wow, this is incredible. I'm never going to forget this.

A (35:30)

What was that experience like of literally watching your work being created day by day?

B (35:36)

It's very surreal and not something you ever think is going to happen to you. And I think. I mean, part of me was actually anxious in a way, because I was worried that seeing the actors dressed up and in the sets that their image that they were creating of the book or the story would replace the images that I had while I was writing the novel. And I was really worried because, I mean, I really love. I'm so attached to those. That imagery as part of the book and part of the experience of writing it and being submerged in the narrative on my own at that point. So I was. And they're so precious to me, but. And I was really. But actually, it hasn't. As I was saying before, the two sit alongside each other. So although I have in my head all the beautiful imagery of Paul and Jesse as Will and Agnes, I still have, in a kind of different compartment, the images that I had of the people when I was writing it. So I'm glad that I'm able to retain both.

A (36:28)

You know, I'm realizing as you're talking about the Glovers and the bird handlers, that you must have done an incredible amount of research for writing the novel. I'm curious if that was utilized in creating the sets and in imagining how Agnes world would be portrayed in Hamnet, the film.

B (36:46)

I did have lots of zoom chats with Margotia, the costume designer, and Alice and Fiona, the set designers. I mean, obviously, they had the most incredible ideas of their own. They are geniuses, my God, the three of them. Amazing. And when I went to the production offices and I saw they all over their office wall were just hundreds and hundreds of visual references and. Which I loved. I spent hours looking at them all and talking about it, so. So we did have a chat, definitely. And. But they. I Mean, you know, they completely ran with it and created their own. Their own 16th century. But it was all so beautifully thought out and beautifully put together. So the thing. One of my favorite things that Malgota did, the costume designer, was that she. I can't remember whether we talked about this. We might have talked about it on the Zoom Chat as I was talking about how ink used to be made in the 16th century, which was made from oak apples, which are a kind of strange thing that grow on apple trees when a wasp has gone inside the bark. So to make ink, in Shakespeare's day, you would take these oak apples, you'd grind them up and you'd soak them in a ferrous compounds. Very complicated. Anyway, so I was talking about that and then Malgosia dyed William Shakespeare's costume with the same compound. So Paul Messer, when you see him on screen, he's literally wearing ink. And I love that. It's one of my favourite details from the whole film. And Alice and Fiona, when they were making the interior of the Henley street house, you can't really see. I don't know whether you can see on screen, but a lot of the bowls and crockery and items in the house have been broken and put back together and there's often marks on the walls. They showed me all this when I was going around, so to kind of speak of the violence that's happened in that house.

A (38:35)

Ooh. The things I will certainly look for on my next viewing. You've mentioned the casting several times since you did in fact have to have the images in your head replaced by these corporeal people. Talk to me about Paul and Jesse and I know you've spoken affectionately about other members of the cast as well. Why? Why them and how did it feel?

B (38:57)

The cast is just a dream cast, actually. They're all absolutely so, so incredible. Chloe said right from the start that she wanted it to be Jessie Buckley as Agnes. And I think it was a genius, genius stroke, a stroke of genius. Because Jesse's so perfect for that role, she kind of. It's hard to know really where Agnes ends and Jesse begins and vice versa, you know, and she poured herself absolute heart and soul, blood and bone into that role every single day, every single take. And she's just. She's just perfect. And I always wanted Shakespeare to be Paul Meskill. Even before Chloe was involved, I was kind of Team Meskill. Whenever it came up, I'd say Paul Mescal. Paul Mescal. I saw him on stage, I think he was either a student or just very newly graduated on stage as Stephen Dedalus in an adaptation of Portrait of the Artist in Dublin at the Gate Theatre. This was years ago, and even, you know, he obviously, he stood out a mile and in the cast. And there's a quite an interesting thematic link between Stephen Dedalus and Hamlet. And Hamlet. Hamlet's actually mentioned in Ulysses, so Joyce was obviously interested in that connection as well, the father and son. So it just. It just always got stuck in my head and I just. So I was really thrilled when he accepted the role. I mean, the cast is just, you know, the kids. Jacoby's incredible and Emily Watson is just luminous. She lights up the screen and. Yeah, so it's just. I think we were incredibly lucky with the casting. And Nina Gold, casting director, did an incredible job of finding these people and saying, how about this one? And she was always right.

A (40:32)

Well, I believed in the characters from the opening beats and thought it was incredible how your interior monologue of Agnes, she knows things. She has a strong spiritual element to her. And I thought, how in the world are they going to show that on the screen? And then they did.

B (40:49)

Well, I think Chloe. One of the things, obviously, that makes Chloe a brilliant director is that she has an amazing capacity to express a character's internal landscape in the external landscape. You know, you see it in the Rider, you see it in Nomadland, and you see it here. It's a really beautiful effect with Jesse in the forest and Paul, I think, at the beginning, anyway, in the glove workshop, that seems to be a reflection of his state of being at that time. Everything is being cut up, everything is stitched, everything is tight and violent, actually. And then later on, you see him by the river, by the Thames, and I feel that's his. I mean, Chloe is brilliant, I think, at placing somebody in the surroundings which reflect their inner landscape.

A (41:33)

Those are such lovely visual representations. I'd love to hear you reflect on the heart of the story. This is a film about love and pain and great loss, which has made many readers and viewers anxious as they enter into the story. They fear it will be bleak. But Hamnet is not that, not the book or the film. What they actually find there is something else, and I'd love to hear you reflect on that something else.

B (41:57)

Well, I was never. I never, ever wanted to write. When I was beginning to write the novel, I never wanted it to be two things. First of all, to be exclusive in a way that I didn't want anyone to have to have read Shakespeare or to have a degree in literature or anything like that. Even to read Shakespeare, ever to watch, to read and be able to relate to the story. It was really important to me that it was relatable to everybody. And also I never wanted it to be bleak. You know, obviously, I know the story centers on the death of an 11 year old child, which of course is heartbreaking, but I wanted people to understand, I think, the way that I feel. There's an indelible connection between the loss of Shakespeare's son and the making of Hamlet and actually how Shakespeare explored and celebrated his life by writing this play and how we know his name. Even now, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years later, we know about him because the play has got his name. And I was never, ever wanted to end the book or the film with Hamnet's death. I think that's too much, it's too awful for a reader because to me, one of the most interesting parts of the story is what happens after that. You know, Shakespeare writes Hamlet and that. So I always, the film and the book always had to end with the production of Hamlet.

A (43:17)

We thank you for that.

B (43:19)

Thank you.

A (43:20)

Of course, the story being what it is, you must have known in some ways what viewers and readers would find in this story, how they would feel, what they would take away. But what has surprised you? I'm curious about what depths this story held or maybe nuances that you did not consciously realize were there.

B (43:40)

To be honest, I don't think you ever know as a novelist or a screenwriter how what people are going to find in your book. And sometimes people say things to me that they saw in a book and I think, wow, I never knew that was there or I never saw it was there. So I don't think, you know, I mean, you, all you can do as the writer is to create the story, write it the way you feel it should be written, and, and then you just have to let it go out into the world and you don't really know how people are going to react. Several people have told me that they've been in screenings and there's a point in the film, in the, in the book, the, the name Shakespeare is never, never appears. The name Will doesn't appear. William, none of that. He's. He's never named because in a way I felt his name is so enormous. You know, it's such an iconic name that I had to just take it out because it was too distracting. In the film, he is called Will, I think. And then about 10 minutes from the end Joe Olwen says, I'm here, you know, as Bartholomew, and it's his brother. He says, we're here to see Will set William Shakespeare. And several people have told me in screenings that they've heard people in the audience go, oh.

A (44:48)

There'S a bit of comic relief.

B (44:51)

No, I was not prepared for people not to realize until that point. But I love that. I think that's fascinating that they've been watching, you know, almost an hour and a half of film, not quite twigged that it's about Shakespeare, but that's great. So I. That's really surprised me. But, yeah, I think anyone's interpretation is great.

A (45:11)

What a compliment that the film is emotionally hospitable all the same.

B (45:14)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's amazing what people take from it.

A (45:18)

Maggie, you've spoken of the joys of new challenges and how you're continuing to learn and evolve as a creator. How did this creative process change you and perhaps your work going forward?

B (45:28)

That's an interesting question. I don't know yet. I think it's too early to tell. I mean, it's been fascinating and I feel like I've learned a lot. And I was writing a novel in between, you know, because writing a screenplay isn't something you do from start to finish. It kind of does sort of a lot of stop starts and there was a writer strike and all those things. So in between the time, I was writing a novel as well. But I think it's one of those things you don't really know. I mean, I think all experiences change you, but I don't know. I'm sure it will filter into my work, all the things I've learned throughout this process, but I don't know how yet. That's one of the interesting things about being a writer. You don't know. You know, something will come out, but it often comes out sideways. So we'll find out, I guess.

A (46:06)

Was it your forthcoming novel, Land, that you were working on? As I was reading, I kept getting the sense of that, oh, Agnes would really enjoy this story.

B (46:15)

That's a funny thought. Maybe she would.

A (46:19)

I was being absolutely serious.

B (46:21)

Strange cross pollination.

A (46:24)

I hope so. Well, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time and I'm so excited for readers to continue to visit your work and this film. We wish you all the best and I'm excited for what you do next.

B (46:35)

Me too. All right, thank you, Anne.

A (46:38)

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