‘Hamnet’ Author and Co-Writer Reacts to Her First Oscar Nomination [Exclusive]

The Oscar nominations are the talk of the town today, but one movie’s staying power is really something special. Focus Features’ Hamnet has overwhelmed audiences with emotion since its Thanksgiving release. Based on Maggie O’Farrell‘s novel, the Chloé Zhaofilm delivers a historical fiction retelling of the events surrounding the death of William Shakespeare‘s son. Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and Will (Paul Mescal) fall in love, start a family together, and experience the painful loss of Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). It is breathtaking, beautiful, and now an Academy Award-nominated film.

To celebrate the nominations, especially for O’Farrell’s Best Adapted Screenplay for her work with Zhao, Collider’s Joe Schmidt spoke with O’Farrell to get her reaction to the big news. “It’s not something I have really expected to happen in my lifetime,” the author said in response to the nomination. “It was my first time on a film set because the life of a novelist is very solitary by nature. I just found the whole thing intriguing, and I knew, walking around the sets and watching people, that everybody involved in the production, whether they were creating lighting rigs or doing the costumes, they were all absolutely at the top of their game. So, there was an amazing feeling on that set. It was certainly very collaborative, and people were just very, very into their jobs, which I found fascinating as a writer.”

The common belief around this historical tale is that Shakespeare wrote his play Hamlet as a way of coping with the death of his son. However, both O’Farrell’s novel and the film adaptation focus the story on Agnes’ love and loss of her son more so than Shakespeare’s more documented feelings. In fact, the movie rarely emphasizes the fact that Mescal’s Will is a prolific playwright until the end of the film.

Maggie O’Farrell Feels “Incredibly Lucky” to Have Gotten ‘Hamnet’s Talented Cast

The cast of Hamnet has been dominating the award circuit — namely, Buckley’s performance has earned her awards at the Critics’ Choice Awards as well as the Golden Globes. But the cast itself, to O’Farrell, is where they really got lucky. “I think we were incredibly lucky with the cast, right down from Paul [Mescal] and Jessie [Buckley] , with the kids andEmily Watsonand David Wilmot. I just knew that all of them were the absolute best people for those jobs, and they were gonna throw their heart and soul and blood and bones into their performances every single day, every single take.”

But without Zhao’s beautiful direction and Łukasz Żal’s cinematography, the film wouldn’t be nearly as breathtaking as it is. O’Farrell went on to say:

“Every shot looks like a Dutch master’s painting, doesn’t it? The fascinating thing I found back watching the two of them is that they’re both really quite people. They’re both quite softly spoken. And so the two of them would be — they weren’t whispering because they didn’t want people to overhear. That’s just the way they were. They would do this very secret chit chat between the two of them and point things out. So it was really interesting watching them do it, watching them set out each shot.”

Maggie O’Farrell on Having to “Disassemble” Her Lengthy Novel Into a Screenplay

Image via Focus Features

O’Farrell’s nomination comes from her work with Zhao to adapt the screenplay from her 2020 novel. But as is the case with any adaptation, you can’t keep everything from the book when writing a screenplay. O’Farrell told Collider how the two worked to “disassemble” the book and figure out how her novel would inform what Zhao’s film would be.

“I had, obviously, it goes with that saying, a very experienced co-writer on the screenplay. Chloe [Zhao] arrived right at the start of the project with a very clear idea about the structure of the film, because our first job was to disassemble the book, in a sense, and reassemble it in a screenplay,” O’Farrell said. “And a lot of that involved cutting things because the novel is 360 odd pages and the screenplay is 90 pages. So there was an awful lot that had to go. But Chloe was quite clear about the strands of the book that she wanted to keep, and which ones, unfortunately, had to go. But I think you have to go into it, especially as the novelist, you’ve got to go into it knowing that the film isn’t going to be an exact replica of your novel. And it couldn’t be, and it shouldn’t be. It’s right and good that the film takes on its own pulse. I always think that the book is my baby, and the film is my niece or nephew.”

‘Hamnet’s Maggie O’Farrell Is Also Rooting for ‘Sinners’

Part of the joy of storytelling and awards season is that creatives often understand and appreciate the other films that were released throughout the year. O’Farrell shared that she was moved by Ryan Coogler‘s film Sinners, whichmade history this year with its number of Oscar nominations, and O’Farrell had nothing but praise for the Warner Bros. film. “Sinners absolutely blew me away. I just thought it was an incredible, incredible film. And that central piece of the music when you can see the ancestors, and you can see the future, that’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen on the screen.”

You can see O’Farrell’s work in Hamnet. Stay tuned at Collider for further Oscars updates.

Release Date

November 26, 2025

Runtime

126 minutes

Director

Chloé Zhao