"I tend to go into a film not quite knowing who the characters are," says Chloé Zhao, pictured here (left) on location with Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. "It's always a bit scary the first week of production because that's when we have to find out who they are. Then, about a week in, I go, 'OK, this is what this is.' " Agata Grzybowska/Focus Features The story of the making of Hamnet is one of agony and ecstasy. Reading Maggie O'Farrell's novel, an imagined but meticulously researched retelling of the death of a child that precipitated the writing of Hamlet, is like touching the void. (It is either, depending on whom you ask, a life-affirming dose of the full spectrum of human emotions or an exercise in utter masochism.) It's a book about art imitating life, and the process of adapting the work for the screen was full of life that imitated art. In January of last year, Chloé Zhao was visiting New York when she experienced an intense personal crisis; she decided to take respite (or a twisted version of it) on a cross-country Amtrak train back to L.A. There was almost no cellphone reception, and it was impossible to sleep, but that's exactly what she was looking for. "I felt I needed to purge out whatever volcanic thing was inside me," she says. The Oscar-winning filmmaker wrote and wrote, and by the time Zhao arrived at Union Station, she was so drowsy she nearly fainted while waiting for her Uber. But, she had 90 pages of a screenplay that became Hamnet. Related Stories Movies 'Avatar: Fire And Ash,' 'Kpop Demon Hunters,' 'Sinners' Among American Cinematheque Crafts Honorees Movies 'One Battle After Another' Leads London Critics' Circle Film Awards Nominations, Ahead of 'Hamnet' *** When Hamnet landed in bookstores in 2020, producer Liza Marshall already had plans to adapt it for the big screen. She'd read it months earlier, delighting in the way it told a familiar story - that of Shakespeare's early life - from the totally unfamiliar female perspective of his wife, Agnes. "Agnes has been written out of history, and in Maggie's version she doesn't even name William," Marshall says. "He's just 'the Latin tutor.' " As soon as she secured the rights, Marshall targeted Zhao. She'd heard the director was looking for a project about a witchy woman, and the Agnes in O'Farrell's novel is a healer who draws from the natural and, often, the mystical. O'Farrell was pleased, too, as she wanted someone who would resist the urges to make the period drama too pristine, or to center Shakespeare. Zhao was fresh off Marvel's Eternals and quite interested, but she had two potentially deal-breaking conditions. The first was that O'Farrell agree to co-write the script. "I thought: 'God, no,' " says O'Farrell. She was a fan of Zhao's, but was eager to move on to her next novel. Her first meeting with the director changed her mind, and she soon found herself swapping voice notes across continents (the author lives in Scotland). "I would wake up in the morning and look at my phone and there would be 12 messages, some of which were a minute long, and the longest ever was 58," O'Farrell says of Zhao's voiced thoughts. "I would transcribe them; it was her way of working out how she feels about certain things while she talks." Zhao's second demand: She only wanted to write the film for Jessie Buckley. The two met for the first time at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival, while the actress was promoting Women Talking, and they connected immediately. "I'm never looking for the actor, I'm looking for the humanity underneath the acting," the filmmaker says. "Fearlessness, and a lack of vanity, and a person willing to take off their mask. Plus, when I went to Jessie's house, she has a kitchen just like Agnes'." Buckley met Zhao for breakfast on the director's next trip to L.A., and didn't realize until afterward, when her agents sent her the book, that she was being considered for the role. "It's one of the only books that I've stayed up all night to read," Buckley says. "It was like oxygen." The actress was drawn to the idea of doing a period piece with the Zhao touch - deeply felt, raw and a bit messy. "It was so embarrassing, but also a good humbling experience," Buckley says of working with the trained hawk. "It was our first week of shooting and this hawk just did not care about me. He had no interest in playing the game. You're standing there, with your hand up and 50 crew waiting, and nothing. All we managed to get was this one shot." Agata Grzybowska/Focus Features While Zhao was courting Buckley, she was also courting Paul Mescal. He'd been at Telluride, too, and the two actors were already friendly from their time filming Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter. Zhao asked for a meeting - to Mescal's slight dismay. "I never want to meet with the directors I admire, and I'm always secretly hoping it will fall through," he says. "Meetings can feel transactional, and you're in this desperate situation where you want them to like you, w