Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542693
5 8 P E R S P E C T I V E J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 6 In Hamnet, the character of Agnes Hathaway is the creation of Jessie Buckley and Chloe Zhao. As is Paul Mescal's William Shakespeare. When an actor takes on a role, they will find their way into the character through a process of thought, conversation, research and discovery. It is understood that the character will become their invention. The design of Hamnet is also an invention, born from historical research, imagination and creative conversations. Early on in the process, there was the fleeting thought that the production might shoot in the actual buildings. There was a strong desire to keep the world of the film grounded, avoiding artifice. The Globe Theatre, Shakespeare's Henley Street house and Hewlands, the Hathaway farm all exist to this day. They are cultural landmarks visited by thousands of people each year. Despite living in the UK for almost a decade, I had never stepped inside any of them. It was the first thing I did when I started working on Hamnet. I was surprised by the scale and grandeur of the Globe. Marble columns with gilt capitals and an enormous looming stage. At the end of our visit there, Chloe said to me quietly, "Can we talk?" We sat down in the back and she said, "I think our Globe needs to be more intimate. It needs to feel like the inside of a tree." And she was right. With cinematographer Lukasz Zal, location manager Lindsey Powell and first AD Marc Wilson, we had spent the week in the British and Welsh countryside, walking through Tudor houses, fields and forests. We had met for the first time in a car park in Wales, just days earlier. What was apparent from the first meeting was that we were all going to discover this film together through a process of looking, listening and feeling our way. The framework was extraordinary. The novel by Maggie O'Farrell is exquisite and the script was, in my mind, perfect. I remember thinking there was not a scene, nor a word that needed changing. But we hadn't yet embarked on the process, and it did change. It was more deeply investigated. While A W o r l d V i v i d , T e x t u r e d a n d T a n g i b l e H A M N E T B Y F I O N A C R O M B I E , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A. GLOBE STAGE. PRODUCTION STILL BY AGATA GRZYBOWSKA. A