Chloé Zhao on “Hamnet,” Which Is Nominated for Eight Academy Awards
00:02This 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 an Oscar for Best Director.And that, of course, was for Nomad Land, the 2020 film starring Francis McDormand as an itinerant worker, living out of a camper and searching for work all over America.Zhao is up for Best Director yet again.and the film Hamnet on the surface is very different from her previous work.It takes place in England in the 16th centurywhere a young William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne,
00:45have to cope with the loss of their son.The film is based on a novel by Maggie O'Farrell,and Hamnet is nominated for Best Picture,along the Best Actress for Jesse Buckley and Five Other Awards.Chloe Zhao talked about Hamnet when the film first came outwith staff writer Michael Shulman.So how did this book and how did this projectmake its way to you?
01:13I was driving through New Mexicoto Tayloride Film Festival,and then that's when Amblin called meand told me about this project.Amblin, meaning...Spielberg's production company.And when they said it over the phone,you know, the reception,
01:31if you haven't been to the four corners,not great.And so it's in and out,and they're saying, you know,it's about Shakespeare's wifeand the death of their son.And I just thought,there's so many things in that sentence
01:46that I have no personal connection to.So I said no.And then a few hours later,I met Paul Metzgo 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.
02:04But I sat next to the creek with himand I just felt something 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 creates. So theenergy was really strong. And he's talking about, oh, I asked him, would you ever consider playyoung Shakespeare? And he said, why are you talking about Hamlet? I love the book so much.You have to read the book. It's not what you think it is.Please read the book.
02:42So 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 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?
03:21But 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 filmmaker is Won Carway,which is the person whose work,that made me want to make films many, many years ago.
03:43So there was a 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 inElizabeth in Englandand you shot in Wales
04:15and her for sureI'm curious about what yougot fromthat very different kind of natural landscapeas you were thinking about the film.The natural worldthe reason why it has been such a big part ofevery film I've done
04:34is becauseI can now, in my 40s, look back at my career and say, the reason why that is, is becauseI have always had a deep fear of death. And I think that drives my creativity. And when you'reafraid to die, you are actually not able to live fully. And I know that deep inside. Andnow when the light goes off, you know, fongs yourself, I'm lying there. I know I'm not. 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 arelationship with nature, then you develop a very embodied spirituality that is not
05:25relied on anyone else telling you, right? It's an embodied safety that you feel withinoneness. 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 as 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.
06:03I 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, it's the opposite of the plains.and the forest is deeply feminine
06:34and it makes you stay stilland when you stay stillyou have nowhere to gobut into the underworldand into yourselfwhere all your shadows areso I knew in my 40sthis is the right place
06:48right kind of naturefor me to dive deep inandwhen it comes to the forest in Walesin terms of inspirationWhen I first visited that forest with my cinematographer Lukash,we wanted to go to find a language for the filmor just let the forest tell us what the film is about beyond what we read in the book.
07:18So nature, we consider nature an HOD, a department head,is constantly working with us.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.
07:45He'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 book.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 peoplein the West do.Maybe the same as I am with, you know, cowboys or westerns, right?
08:21I watched only two and half westerns when I made the writer.So, but I watched more afterwards because I fell in love with it.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 womanand 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 uteritisies, as William Shakespeare.So that, and to answer your question, he's very different than in the book.
09:14Actually, Maggie reminded me a couple weeks ago when she was here.She's like, you remember that you see in the book, he's quite talkative.He's expressive, you know, an actor.And I guess I'm, 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 themselvesin their arts because they never felt safe to express their emotions in real life and in our society.What are you looking at?
09:51You?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 sense.space for your emotions because mom is crying, you know, my sister's crying. So I was raised by a manlike that. I've loved and beloved by a man like that my whole life. So it just became natural for meand Paul as well was part of that decision as all, like watching him. There's him in this characteras well. And I can only work that way because moment by moment I need to feel love towards this
10:38character, right? And I used to feel like I understand him. And there's a part of me that is likehim. 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 shootingand 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.
11:20Just 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.
11:51So 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 Hamlet, 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 to me,look, I can study it and translate every wordand understand what it all means.But Paul said to me, listen,
12:25if 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 me and Lukash, who also doesn't speak much English, we sat there and we watched Paul's performance.And in a way, we kind of embody Agnes, 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 where we go, oh, you know, our throat is tight.
13:02our stomach turns, then we knowit'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.Director Chloe Zhao speaking with Michael Schulman.More in a moment.I believe you just wrapped directing the pilot of the Buffy the Vampire Slave Revival.
13:47So you're back working on a franchise with a very intense fandom.I wish I'm also one.of them.Sure that helps.But I'm curious as you move forward in your career, how do you see your relationship with the franchise-drivenpart of Hollywood?You know, it's, I think it, from what I can tell, it's only getting harder and harderto make a movie that isn't based on something connected to some form of IP.
14:16And yet you have, you've done both.You're continuing to do both.I mean, you could call Hamnet-Net-in.William Shakespeare IP in some way, but, you know, it's a...I thought about his sellability when I sign up.Both Maggie's book and him, so it's pretty strong IP for dealing with you.Right.So how do you see yourself fitting into the industry that is now so IP-driven?
14:45Why 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 long-true.We just made an announcement me and my producing partner, Nick Ganda.
15:00We teamed up with Kodansha, which is the oldest and one of the largest manga,well, publishing house in Japan.And they have everything from Akira to Ghost in the Shelf to Attack on Titan,you know, their sailor moon.We just teamed up with them to launch Kodansha Studios,which means that we will be developing life action adaptations of the show.their IP in-house before it goes to the studios.Tell me more about manga.
15:33Manga 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 relations.between studios licensing Japanese IP, and it's particularly manga IP.And the adaptation process has been quite complicated for years and years and years now.
16:11So 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 togetherand 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 filmmakerand then can allow them to work together to develop the screenplay.
16:57until 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 will never share with you my pen name.But I don't mind.
17:29I think the word original is misunderstood in modern world,because Oregon 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.
17:57nature, 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 healthy or 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 to part.questions, images.
18:32So how does that challenge you on a movie setand how does it help you on a movie set?Good question.See, I didn't know, I didn't have my official diagnosisuntil this year.So in the past, I always wondered,maybe I'm just built wrong.Something is off with me.
18:56And, I mean, going to like premieres or 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 I 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, is 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.
19:57And if I don't process it and more 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, you know, that's,tough. Okay, so you won't be working in smell of vision.No. I think, but I love, you know, anything with, 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.
20:49That's lost cause.And congratulations on Hamlet.It's really beautiful movie.Thank you.Chloe Schaus, Hamnet, is nominated for eight Academy Awards.And Michael Shilman will be in L.A., covering the Oscars, just as he has for many years before.And you can always read him at New Yorker.com.And you can also subscribe to The New Yorker there as well, New Yorker.com.
21:16I'm David Remnick.This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.See you next time.Our Our is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards,with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul.This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, LouisMitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer.
21:44With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable,Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccett.The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Truina Endowment Fund.
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