The New Yorker Radio Hour - Chloé Zhao on “Hamnet,” Her Film About William Shakespeare’s Grief

Episode Date: December 7, 2025

Chloé Zhao was the second woman to ever win an Oscar for Best Director, for her 2020 film “Nomadland.” After taking a wide turn to create the Marvel supernatural epic “Eternals,” Zhao has taken another intriguing change of direction with “Hamnet,” based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about how William Shakespeare coped with the death of his only son. In conversation with the New Yorker staff writer Michael Schulman, Zhao discusses the role that nature plays in her filmmaking, from the American West to the forests of Britain; the process of adapting manga to film; and how neurodivergence informs her creative process.New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Chloe Zhao was only the second woman to win the Oscar for Best Director, and that was for her 2020 film Nomad Land, which starred Francis McDormant as an itinerant worker. Chloe Zhao is 43, and she's had a varied career, ranging from low-budget contemporary westerns to making a Marvel film called Eternals, which was a super-neutral. natural epic with a colossal budget. Now Zhao has taken another distinct turn, to Hamnet, a story about the creative life and the

family life of William Shakespeare. Based on a novel by Maggie O'Farrell, Zhao's film is about Shakespeare as a young man, grieving the loss of his only son. It stars Paul Muscal and Jesse Buckley. Chloe Zhao spoke with our staff writer Michael Schulman, who covers film and entertainment for the New Yorker. How did this book and how did this project make its way to you? I was driving through New Mexico to Taylor Ride Film Festival,

and then that's when Amblin called me and told me about this project. Amblin, meaning... Ambleen, Spielberg's production company. And when they said it over the phone, you know, the reception, if you haven't been to the four corners, not great. So it's in and out, and they're saying, you know, it's about a shade-spear's fly. and the death of their son. And I just thought, there's so many things in that sentence that I have no personal connection to.

So I said no. And then a few hours later, I met Paul Mexico for the first time. I didn't know who he was because I'm not seeing normal people. His careers change a lot in a short amount of time. Yes. But I sat next to the creek with him and I just felt something about. about him. You know, there's something about him. There's a simmering discomfort in him, like an animal, you know, like a step and wolf, just want to burst out. And that's why he

create. So the energy was really strong. And he's talking about, oh, I asked him, would you ever consider play young Shakespeare? And he said, wait, are you talking about hemnet? I love the book so much. You have to read the book. It's not what you think. is. Please read the book. So what about the book when you read it made you feel like you were the right person to do it? Were there details in the novel that really spoke to you? When I read the book, I thought the internal landscape was so beautifully described. That is my, that usually I have to really get to know, say Brady from the writer. I had to get to know him for such a long period of time,

would I understand his internal landscape? So then I can externalize it on screen. So the audience isn't just relying on him verbally, right? But Maggie already done that work for all the characters. So I thought, that's my blueprint. And also there's a rhythm to the way she writes, has a heartbeat to it, that is very similar to my... I found out later that her favorite filmmakers won Carway.

which is the person whose work that made me want to make films many, many years ago. So there was that similarity as well. I mean, there's also an external landscape in the film that is so vivid. And you're a filmmaker who shoots the natural world beautifully. Anyone who's seen your first three features were all in or in part set in the American West in South Dakota specifically. Hamnet is set in Elizabeth in England, and you shot in Wales and her for sure. I'm curious about what you got from that very different kind of natural landscape as you were thinking about the film. The natural world, the reason why it has been such a big part of every film I've done is because

I can now, in my 40s, look back at my career and say, the reason why that is, is because I have always had a deep fear of death. And I think that drives my creativity. And when you're afraid to die, you are actually not able to live fully. And I know that deep inside. And now when the light goes off, you know, function is off. I'm lying there. I know I'm not.

living my life fully. And it's because I'm so terrified. I don't feel safe in this world. And also, my instinctual human self knows that when you go into nature, if you have a relationship with nature, then you develop a very embodied spirituality that is not relied on anyone else telling you, right? It's an embodied safety that you feel within on oneness. And that you can only find in nature when you become one with your surroundings. All of our great prophets goes into nature to come back with the message for a reason. And so I just knew that's part of working on my own shit.

So get myself into nature. And the second part to answer that question is that in my 30s, I was much more like a pioneer, like going west, going into finding treasures. I wanted to go as wide as possible, chasing horizon after horizon so I can come back with the treasures. The camera is insatiable. It wants to capture everything.

And I want to move. I'm always on the move. And then in my 40s, after a mid-life crisis, I realized that I can't keep running from myself. And in the forest, is the opposite of the plains and the forest is deeply feminine

and it makes you stay still and when you stay still you have nowhere to go but into the underworld and into yourself where all your shadows are so I knew in my 40s this is the right place, right kind of nature for me to dive deep in

and when it comes through the forest in Wales in terms of inspiration I was when I first visited that forest with my cinematographer Lukash we wanted to go to find a language for the film or just let the forest

tell us what the film is about beyond what we read in the book and I was in Kiev right before that and I was with somebody who was making a documentary about a strip of forest in the front line And when I left Kiev and went to Wales, and it was this beautiful spring forest that we were in, me and Lukashu was there, and I was getting some images and footage from the front line in Ukraine. And I will see these dark holes, black holes in the ground, and some of them, they're lime mines, holes, sometimes they're dugouts.

And then I walk around our forests, and I will see these black holes that are natural-made black holes. I had such a big emotional reaction to it. I started crying. I sat next to the void, this black void, because it's coming for all of us. And also in that void, the compost, new life comes. In this hole here and the one in that front line,

new life will come. And there's hope in heaven. He wrote, all living things must die, passing through nature to eternity. And to me, that eternity is love. And so then my Polish DP runs over and look at the hole and go, I understand this. We must film this hole. And then he filmed the hole. And we had Max Richter's sleep album playing.

And then he started lifting up at some point the tripod. And then they went up to the sky. And then we just started. It went up and down, up and down. this is what the film is about. Right. So nature, we consider nature in HOD, the department head, is constantly working with this. Director Chloe Zhao speaking with Michael Schulman. More in a moment.

So one of your main characters is William Shakespeare. I know. The William Shakespeare, played beautifully by Paul Neskel. And, you know, this is not the witty, hyperverbal Shakespeare of Shakespeare love. he's actually a man of pretty few words. He's brooding, he's frustrated. As you and Maggie were writing the screenplay, how did you approach just the challenge

of writing lines for William Shakespeare? I think the reason why the producers, and also Maggie chose me, is because I don't feel that way about William Shakespeare. I don't have the same reverence. I do have reverence intellectually, but I don't have the burden on my shoulders as many people in the West do.

Maybe the same as I am with, you know, cowboys or westerns, right? I watched only two and half Westerns when I made the writer. So, but I watched more afterwards because I fell in love with it. And it's the same. I'm probably going to be doing more Shakespeare-related things after this. But I didn't come feeling that he's any different than, a man who fell in love with a woman and couldn't quite express his feelings.

So I never, the pressure is on the actors. It's on Paul, who does have a lot of reverence in the sense that not only what we put him through, not only playing William Shakespeare, but also telling the story of Orpheus Uteritises. I was William Shakespeare. So that, and to answer your question, he's very different than in the book.

Actually, Maggie reminded me a couple weeks ago when she was here. She's like, do you remember that? You see in the book, he's quite talkative. He's expressive, you know, an actor. And I guess that was me. I guess I made a decision to change his character because I find a lot of artists, male artists. get into expressing themselves in their arts because they never felt safe to express their emotions in real life and in our society.

What are you looking at? You? Why? I thought you were a man of words, Master Touter. As a little boy, they're told to toughen up or, you know, there's no space for your emotions because mom is crying. You know, my sister's crying. So I was raised by a man like that.

I've loved and beloved by a man like that. that my whole life. So it just became natural for me and Paul as well was part of that decision as well, watching him. There's him in this character as well. And I can only work that way because moment by moment I need to feel love towards this character. And I need to feel like I understand him. And there's a part of me that is like him. I feel safe in my fantasy world. on set, then I can deal with emotional situations in life. So Paul was under a lot of pressure because we don't talk about who this character is. We start shooting and find him.

So that's day three when we did the Orpheus scene, you know, the scene where he goes, I don't, talking to people is difficult for me. And then she said, tell me a story. We did that whole thing on day three. and many, many takes. Usually I don't do that many takes. Just for him to find who is William Shakespeare, speaking one of the greatest myths to a woman he fell in love with.

They're very loaded. Yes, and then at one point he actually burst forth with the to be or not to be speech. That's also pressure on Paul, yes. So I know you went to school in England as a teenager. Were you taught Shakespeare there? Was that your first encounter? with sort of his actual text?

Well, I didn't speak English. So when you don't speak English and you have Romeo and Juliet in front of you in the equivalence of a ninth grade, still, when I was on set of Hamnet, when Paul was delivering his speech, I only understand a third of it, technically, because I just don't understand what those words means.

But at the beginning, Paul has said, me, look, I can study it and translate every word and understand what it all means. But Paul said to me, listen, if Shakespeare's performed right, you don't have to understand what they're saying. You feel it in the body. The language is written like that. And so in a way, me and Lukash, who also does speak much English, we sat there and we watch pulse performance. And in a way, we kind of embody Aneus, who doesn't quite understand everything,

but we feel it. So in those days in the globe, I'm judging by me and Lukash's physical reaction. We start crying, or we go, oh, you know, our heart, like our throat is tight. Our stomach turns. Then we know it's the right take.

We didn't even have to understand every word, which is really magical. It's making me think about Shakespeare completely different. I mean, I think that's true for anyone watching Shakespeare. I believe you just wrapped directing the pilot of the Buffy the Vampire Slave Revival. So you're back working on a franchise with a very intense fandom. I wish I'm also one of them. I'm sure that helps.

But I'm curious as you move forward in your career, how do you see your relationship with the franchise driven part of Hollywood you know it's I think from what I can tell it's only getting harder and harder to make a movie that isn't based on something connected to some form of IP and yet you have

you've done both you're continuing to do both I mean you could call Hamnet and William Shakespeare IP in some way but you know I thought about his sellability when I sign up both Maggie book and him. It's a pretty strong IP

for dealing with you. Right. So how do you see yourself fitting into the industry that is now so so IP driven? Why do you think that is? Because people want to save bets. It's hard to make money. Yeah. On a film.

Yeah. You know, I just launched, I just made an announcement me and my producing partner in Nekanda. We teamed up with Kodangsa, which is the oldest and one of the largest manga, well, publishing house in Japan, and they have everything from Acura to Ghost in the Shelf to Attack on Titan, you know, their Sailor Moon.

We just team up with them to launch Kodansha Studios, which means that we will be developing live action adaptations of their IP in-house before it goes to the studios. Tell me more about manga. manga is quite different than Western comics, particularly American comics. manga is heavily influenced by Shintoism, Japanese Shintoism. And if you don't know what that is, is believing that every object has a spirit. Right, like this glass has a spirit within itself. There has been quite complicated relationship between studios licensing Japanese IP.

And it's particularly in manga. IP and the adaptation process has been quite complicated for years and years and years now. So I've always dreamt to be a bridge between the East and the West and to be able to create a safe and nurturing garden in a way for international filmmakers, writer-directors, and Japanese sensei's manga artist, authors to come together and to come together and to, to at early stage, allow the artists to really see each other. Why did this artist create this story in Japan? You know, what is really the core of it?

And then spiritually, emotionally, and then to find the right filmmaker and then can allow them to work together to develop the screenplay until the little, you know, the shoots of the plants are strong enough. and then we go to our studio partners. I think that's, I guess, one of my place in the IP world. And I think adopting from IP is beautiful. I started my writing career as a fan fiction writer in China. A pretty well-known one, too.

But you'll never know because I would never share with you my pen name. But I don't mind. I think the word original is misunderstanding. in modern world because Oregal means the source. It means old, the beginning. So original actually means going back to the source.

Yeah, but our modern culture is so obsessed with new things. Must have new things. It's a very masculine, dominated way of looking at the world. It must have new things all the time. But nature, everything goes back to the source. So I don't mind working with IP. It's just how we do it needs to be, I think could be healthier and more wholesome.

Yeah. The last thing I want to ask you about is you've described yourself as deeply neurodivergent. And you've talked about how you become overstimulated and kind of shut down. You know, a director on a set has to deal with so much, so many people, departments, questions, images. is. So how does that challenge you on a movie set and how does it help you on a movie set? Good question. See, I didn't know, you know, I didn't have my official diagnosis until this year.

So in the past, I always wondered maybe I'm just built wrong. Something is off with me. And, I mean, going to like premieres or press. press days, you know, promoting the film is even harder because the amount of exposure, you know, going to an awards show or things like that. So, you feel a lot of shame around why can't I enjoy it, you know, like the people around me could be. And then once I have some language around it, it's very empowering.

I go, okay. So the fact that I'm good at some things. Right? It's my sensitivity, my intuition, my ability to process information, my pattern recognizing skills. I can watch people and find patterns. And I can pretty much predict what they're going to do in the scene. All those things I understand is because my brain takes in so much more information than the person next to me. So I need time to process that information. And if I don't process it, and more are coming in, then I could shut down and implode or just have massive, you know, meltdowns. So since then, and also a really strong perfume can give me a shutdown. Really? Yeah, if someone's worrying, if going through the airport, you know, that's tough. Okay, so you won't be working in Smellivision.

No. But I love, you know, anything that's natural from a natural world is fine. It's the chemical in the perfume that is overwhelming, like cleaning products, air fresheners, things like that. Well, you are very likely headed on the road to the Academy Awards again. So I hope that they are, that no one is wearing very strong perfume at them. That's lost cause. It's okay. And congratulations.

Hamnet. That's really beautiful movie. Thank you. The New Yorker's Michael Shulman, speaking with director Chloe Zhao. You can find Justin Chang's review of Hamnet at New Yorker.com and of course you can subscribe to the New Yorker there as well. New Yorker.

I'm David Remnick and that's our show for this week. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max

Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sama. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccan.