{"id":631556,"date":"2025-12-14T08:24:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T08:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/631556\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T08:24:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T08:24:27","slug":"paul-mescal-and-jessie-buckley-discuss-inspirations-at-irish-premiere-of-hamnet-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/631556\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley discuss inspirations at Irish premiere of Hamnet \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Mescal<\/a> and Jessie Buckley<\/a> walked the red carpet of the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin on Saturday evening for the Irish premiere of Hamnet. <\/p>\n

The \u201ccruelly raw\u201d film is Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s cinematic adaptation of the book Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O\u2019Farrell<\/a>. It will be released in Irish cinemas in January. <\/p>\n

O\u2019Farrell, who was born in Derry, said it was \u201cabsolutely thrilling\u201d to be in Dublin for the premiere. She is proud of Buckley and Mescal\u2019s rendition of her characters. \u201cI think rightly they are getting the recognition they deserve,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Buckley and Mescal were both nominated for Golden Globes for their roles as Agnes Hathaway and William Shakespeare<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Hamnet tells the story of Shakespeare\u2019s marriage to Anne Hathaway \u2013 who is named Agnes in the film \u2013 and the aftermath of the death of the couple\u2019s young son.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that struck me so much was that this was a woman who was deeply embodied, was so connected to nature and her own elemental, natural force. She\u2019s a woman with a strong, wide open heart and a mother with an epic landscape inside her,\u201d said Buckley.<\/p>\n

\"PaulPaul Mescal at the Irish premiere of Hamnet in the Lighthouse cinema in Dublin on Saturday. Photograph: Barry Cronin for The Irish Times. <\/p>\n

Mescal is most admiring of Shakespeare\u2019s life as a family man in Hamnet: \u201cI find it incredibly inspiring how ambitious he is in terms of his feelings, and how he invests in his love with Agnes. It\u2019s kind of warm but unrelenting in a way. There\u2019s a real confidence in the way he expresses things. And I think that that requires a lot of bravery,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Will he take those attributes with him going forward? \u201cI certainly hope so,\u201d he said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

The death of the couple\u2019s child, Hamnet, is believed to have inspired Shakespeare\u2019s play Hamlet. <\/p>\n

In a rare five-star film review<\/a>, Irish Times critic Donald Clarke wrote that far from being \u201cgrief porn\u201d, the film artfully balances cataclysmic grief with \u201cintense dignity\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"JessieJessie Buckley at the Irish premiere of Hamnet in Dublin on Saturday. Photograph: Barry Cronin for The Irish Times. <\/p>\n

O\u2019Farrell described this storyline as an explanation of \u201cwhere art comes from and why we need it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgnes for me contained unbelievable strength, and an unbelievable ferocious tenderness and I loved living and loving and grieving in that space,\u201d said Buckley. <\/p>\n

Newly a mother herself, Buckley said she believes \u201cmothers contain multitudes\u201d. \u201cI\u2019m always curious about revealing the depths of a woman and a mother that haven\u2019t been seen yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no process. I\u2019m not really interested in acting at all, I want to be in a place of being … I want to be absolutely inside the body and unconscious mind of the people that I\u2019m playing, so that I can learn something that I didn\u2019t know about the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buckley and Mescal said the film touches on such elemental human things that everyone will take something from it. \u201cThis film reminded me of what it is to be a storyteller and the journey you can take,\u201d said Buckley. <\/p>\n

The pair are relaxed about portraying the life of a character who is also a monumental figure in theatre: \u201cI like being his wife and his mistress,\u201d Buckley summed it up, leaving Mescal stumped for words. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley walked the red carpet of the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin on Saturday evening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[4080,134883,21111,77,162188,163309,9375,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-631556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-chloe-zhao","10":"tag-dublin","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-jessie-buckley","13":"tag-maggie-o-farrell","14":"tag-paul-mescal","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115716965496773889","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}