‘Hamnet’ Team on Chloé Zhao’s Directing, Leadership and Her Cameo During the Final Globe Theater Scene

The creative team behind Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” gathered for a panel discussion as part of the Variety Screening Series to reveal the collaborative process that brought Maggie O’Farrell’s novel to life on screen.

The film follows Agnes (Jessie Buckley), the wife of a young William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), as she navigates motherhood in Stratford-upon-Avon while her husband pursues his theatrical ambitions in London. When their son Hamnet falls ill, the family faces devastating loss that inspires Shakespeare’s greatest work, “Hamlet.”

One theme surfaced repeatedly throughout the panel: Chloe Zhao’s directing style and leadership, which set the tone for the production from its earliest stages. “She’s so devoid of ego or any sense that she’s the boss and she’s in charge,” said casting director Nina Gold, who earned a shortlist nomination for her work. Gold was joined by the film’s costume designer Malgosia Turzanska, cinematographer Łukasz Żal and set decorator Alice Felton. Gold went on to say, “While she obviously has a kind of genius master plan, she’s so collaborative and inclusive — you just talk and really, really work on it together.”

Zal also praised Zhao’s instinctual approach to filmmaking. “She was sometimes coming for a short moment and just making very, very good and very quick decisions,” he said. “She just really just makes decisions with her body, with her heart less than with her mind.”

Gold described the intensive process of casting the children, particularly Jacobi Jupe, who was 10 years old when he landed the title role. Jupe was someone who had been on her radar and had wanted to cast him for “The Roses,” but at the time, he was not the right age. After auditioning him “probably eight times,” Gold said she was no longer surprised by his performance, particularly what he brought to the death scene. “Seeing this incredible kind of access to his emotions in such an unfettered way and a willingness to just leap in there and keep doing it was kind of amazing,” she said.

Turzanska highlighted a serendipitous research discovery when London rental house Cosprop found a box unopened for 100 years containing fancy Victorian ball costumes. Among them, an authentic Elizabethan doublet. “I lost it and cried, and it was just magnificent,” she said. “There’s so few garments that are not kind of royal and noble that have been preserved. And this was a simple garment, which was just so beautiful to be able to see.” The discovery inspired her doublet designs for Will’s character.

Turzanska traced Agnes’ emotional journey through color, particularly red. “She is such a vibrant, undeniably living creature,” the designer said. “There was always the conversation about this pumping blood and life.” Over the course of the film color evolves from vibrancy through rust tones during motherhood to “this grayish, purplish scab” after her son’s death, before regaining life force in the finale.

Felton detailed the intricate glove workshop set that was needed because Will’s father is a glover. She described the space as oppresive. “It’s somewhere that he gets hurt and threatened. Will doesn’t want to be there. He doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, but he’s forced to be there. So there’s objects in it that are quite sharp and threatening as well as just beautiful objects.”

Felton continued, “We had a whole team of leather workers and we, you could go in there and you could, you could choose your gloves.”

As part of her research, Felton went to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and copied gloves from the era. “We found beautiful old gloves from the period and had them remade, and we made them at different stages.” Even though, it was background dressing, it informed Will’s oppressive environment as an aspiring writer.

Zal complimented Felton’s work and explained how he visually captured Will’s emotional confinement before meeting Agnes through restrictive framing. “We wanted to build a contrast between them,” he said. “He’s somehow trapped with his thoughts in what he has in his head … The ceiling is pressing him, there are divisions in this house, everything very structured and compositions are somehow closed.”

Felton also talked about the progression of the children’s bedroom. She explained, how it starts with two beds “which we handmade.” Felton said, “Then obviously two became one, and then when they cleared out and the space was empty.”

Color was equally as important for Felton and the film’s production designer. The palette of the house is very much blues, grays, creams and darkwood with hardly any color. The bed drapes in Will and Agnes’ room are made, and have an orangey red color. After Hamnet dies, all color is stripped from that room.

In the film’s final scene where audiences watch the first performance of “Hamlet,” at the Globe Theatre, Gold cast over 350 extras. In her search, she sought “interesting non-modern faces”

All had to be dressed by Turzanska and her team. The costume designer revealed that Zhao herself appears in the Globe scene during the film’s finale, reaching out her hand from the center balcony—a hidden cameo for those who look closely.

“I feel ownership of the movie, of the whole movie more than I have ever felt because of the way she led us,” Turzanska said.

Watch the video above.