Paul Mescal on the Healing Power of ‘Hamnet’: ‘It’s Not Grief Porn’

Paul Mescal was largely unknown in 2020, when he and Daisy Edgar-Jones starred in the limited series “Normal People” and he launched a career that in just five years has included “The Lost Daughter,” “Aftersun,” “Gladiator II,” “The History of Sound” and now “Hamnet.”

At only 29, the Irish actor has won two BAFTA Awards and been nominated for an Oscar, an Emmy, Golden Globe, three Critics Choice Awards and two Actor Awards. “I’m very proud of it,” he says of his career so far, which will continue with Sam Mendes’ four-film Beatles extravaganza, in which he’s playing Paul McCartney.

But McCartney won’t be his first stab at playing a hugely successful writer and artist, because in Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” he stars as William Shakespeare. The film views the Bard from the perspective of his wife, Agnes (a fierce Jessie Buckley), and focuses on the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, and the subsequent writing of “Hamlet,” a play that can be read as a veiled tribute to the boy.

The film’s climax (spoilers ahead) takes place at the first performance of “Hamlet,” with Agnes realizing that her husband had not abandoned his family in the aftermath of tragedy, but had been processing his grief through art. Mescal sat down with TheWrap to talk about that scene and his relationship to Shakespeare at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, where he, Zhao and Buckley received the Vanguard Award.

Before you ever met Chloé and talked about this movie, you were a fan of Maggie O’Farrell’s book “Hamnet,” weren’t you?
Massive. I just think it’s a wonderful perspective on William Shakespeare before he was considered a genius, and on the nature of art and how it separates us from our loved ones. I think it’s something that a lot of actors or fellow creatives will understand. It was beautifully articulated in the book. And that was my in.

When you read a book like that, given your day job, are you thinking, “Oh, I would love to play that role”?
Probably. I think when I read it initially, I didn’t necessarily see myself as what we associate Shakespeare to be. I wanted him to be more animalistic, more traditionally masculine or heart-led rather than head-led. ‘Cause I don’t think the writers that I know, or the fundamentally creative people that I know, necessarily live in their heads. They live in their bodies and their creative force comes from that energy – not from being tied to an attic table and writing whimsically into the mid-distance. I don’t think that’s who he is to me.

Chloé has talked about meeting with you in Telluride before she really even knew who you were. Was she on your radar at that point?
Oh, massively. “The Rider” was a very formative film for me in terms of how filmmakers’ process can ultimately impact the acting choices. In that instance, it was very much rooted in the sense of naturalism. And then I loved watching how she worked with Fran [McDormand] in “Nomadland.”

It started as a general meeting. I knew that she was flirting with the idea of doing “Hamnet,” but I wasn’t able to necessarily lead with that. (Laughs) So we talked for about an hour and then she asked me to turn in profile. And then she goes, “Have you ever thought about playing William Shakespeare?” I said, “absolutely,” and we started talking about “Hamnet.” That year, I was in Telluride with “Aftersun” and Jessie was there with “Women Talking.” So for us to jump forward two years and be opening this film in the mountains at Telluride was a very special full-circle moment.

You and Jesse had crossed paths before.
We had. We were on “The Lost Daughter” together, but we didn’t shoot together. So we got to know each other on “Hamnet,” which I really feel was the perfect way to do it. It was a relationship that was rooted in deep admiration and friendship, but we didn’t really know the corners of each other yet. We discovered that essentially on camera. I just adore her.

In the book, the character is never referred to as Shakespeare. He’s the husband, the father, not the icon.
It’s not reverential towards him. The portrait of him in the book is one of creativity, not of genius. And often it’s stifled creativity. Writing or expressing is not something that comes easily. But it’s a means of survival for him, I think. And that feels relatable to me, even though I’m not a writer. I understand that feeling as an actor, too, that feeling that you need to express something.

Beyond the book and the script, was it important for you to do research into what Shakespeare might have been like?
Not in terms of the assumed facts of his life. That wasn’t as useful to me. I tried it and I was like, if it’s boring me, it’ll probably bore an audience. (Shrugs) Not that it bores me. I have a curiosity about history, but I became far more curious about what he’s trying to articulate about life in his plays. That became my bible.

Had you done any Shakespeare on stage?
Yeah, I did a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in my second year at drama school. And I studied a lot of Shakespeare. I loved playing it and didn’t necessarily love watching it. (Laughs) There were certain productions that I absolutely loved, but a lot of it I found inaccessible. I think maybe that’s to do with being an Irish actor and feeling disinherited, thinking that Shakespeare fundamentally belongs to British people. That was my own mistake. I kind of put a chip on my shoulder about who this belongs to, when it actually belongs to the world.

Just look at the number of films or projects this past year that had to do with Shakespeare.
It was wild. There were three Shakespeare-related productions at Telluride. It’s amazing, and it’s a testament to the man that there’s a film like “Hamnet” where it feels deeply rooted in the period, but it feels like the family are going through contemporaneous issues. That’s really exciting to me.

I know that the concept and the details of that final scene changed while you were shooting it.
Yeah.

It now ends with Agnes reaching out to the character of Hamlet at the first performance of Shakespeare’s play, with Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” playing on the soundtrack and playing on the set as you filmed it. What was it like during the four days you spent shooting that scene?  
I mean, there’s never enough days for listening to Max Richter. And his new record had just come out around the time of this film, so he was very much present with us.

Myself, Chloé and Jessie had very different experiences of that scene. The scene is different for Shakespeare because he’s in a moment that is very much present tense. He’s in his routine that day, in that he’s doing the play. The thing that breaks that routine is the fact that he sees his wife.

But the challenging thing was that Jessie had to put herself in a very vulnerable place of being lost. And the vulnerability that I had to express was one of being seen. I think it’s very moving as a result of both of us not playing the same thing.

There’s a very easy trap to fall into in a moment like that, where it feels maybe melodramatic. That moment is definitely seismic, but I don’t think it’s overtly melodramatic. I think you see the differences in both of those human beings in those last 20 minutes. And the fact that he’s seen by her is the reason that he can break. You don’t see him really break up until the last five minutes of the film.  

At a time when the world is in such turmoil, there’s real resonance in seeing Jessie’s character reach out through her grief to find some healing in art.
To find some understanding, find some love. Yeah. I think the film is very much interested in healing through grief rather than observing grief. That was important to us all, that it’s not grief porn. I think you have to be respectful to what grief is for many people. You can’t trivialize it. You’ve got to show it and then comment on it. And I think the film is, to my mind, very successful in doing that. It doesn’t pull any punches in terms of what Jessie or I or the family goes through. And as a result, the ending works for me.

It doesn’t end down, it ends up. And that’s hopefully what will happen to all of us when the time comes, is that there’ll be some moment of clarity or understanding. That’s a privilege that Agnes and Will have in that moment, through very different avenues. They grieve the boy that they loved so much, Agnes in a very direct way and Will in an indirect way. But what he did [in the play “Hamlet”] means that we’re still talking about it 400 years on, and there’s not a lot of young boys who died during the plague that we can point to. That’s a testament to him.

The post Paul Mescal on the Healing Power of ‘Hamnet’: ‘It’s Not Grief Porn’ appeared first on TheWrap.