How Hamnet Shaped Jessie Buckley’s Journey To Becoming a Mom

In a year when the 2026 Golden Globes contenders seem laser-focused on the trials of parenthood — from the family-friendly Golden Globe nominees to the heavier dramas —Jessie Buckley’s real-life timeline has a way of cutting through the noise. Her gut-wrenching turn as a grieving mother in Hamnet — a drama about Shakespeare’s family after the death of their 11-year-old son — didn’t just earn critical acclaim. It also happened right alongside her own path into motherhood.

Buckley wasn’t a mom when she filmed the movie, but she’s been clear that the desire was already there. Speaking in the press room after the 2026 Critics Choice Awards (where she won Best Actress as a newly minted celebrity mom), she said she “deeply wanted to be a mother” at the time. “Well, I wasn’t a mother at the time that I filmed it. I deeply wanted to be a mother, but I have a mother and I know women and we’re pretty epic,” Buckley told People, adding, “We contain multitudes.”

In that same press room moment, she also explained what Hamnet offered her beyond the obvious acting challenge: the chance to tell Agnes’ story as more than a footnote in Shakespeare’s. “So to be able to get to understand one from this woman’s point of view, from Agnes’ point of view, and give this woman who has always been kind of misplaced beside this giant… and to give her a voice was such a privilege,” she said.

If that all sounds like an actor describing work that lingers, Buckley has been even more direct elsewhere. On The New York Times’ “Modern Love” podcast, she connected the role to her own desire for a child: “When I was filming Hamnet, I deeply wanted to become a mother,” she said, calling it “such a gift” to move through Agnes’ motherhood before becoming a mother herself.

And in hindsight, she’s described the timing as almost immediate. Buckley told British Vogue that playing Agnes “induc[ed]” her to become a mother, tapping a “deep need” to “find” her own — and that after filming wrapped in September 2024, she was pregnant “a few days later.” And she noted how every relationship changes with motherhood: “Your relationship to the world is new, your relationship with your partner is new, your relationship to your work is new. I don’t know what the next story is that I need to tell because it’s seismic what’s happened.”

Now, Buckley’s daughter is about six months old, and she’s been specific about what’s gotten her through the early stretch. In a November interview with Elle, Buckley called the “best thing about being a mom” the way your kid can reset everything on a hard day: “they give you these otherworldly little smiles and make your heart crack into a thousand pieces and you think, ‘Oh, it’s all going to be okay.’”

Despite Hamnet earning Buckley major accolades – including a Critics’ Choice Award and a Golden Globe nomination – the new mom is keeping it all in perspective. She quips that hours before a big awards ceremony, she was up at 4 a.m. changing a dirty nappy for her coughing 6-month-old.

“I’ve got a 6-month-old at home… So I’m getting on with my life,” Buckley said to People, emphasizing that no amount of Hollywood glamour outshines her role as a mother. As she noted, “to make anything at all, is a triumph” – and for Buckley, her most cherished creation may just be the little one waiting for her at home.

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