Paul Mescal has become cinema’s most compelling young actor by choosing projects that blur the line between fiction and profound emotional truth. Fresh from his Oscar-nominated performance in AFTERSUN, Mescal is now stepping into the world of William Shakespeare with HAMNET, a film that he describes as feeling “almost like a documentary” despite being entirely fictional.
Standing on the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival, Mescal spoke with the conviction of an actor who has found his artistic north star. HAMNET, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel and adapted by O’Farrell alongside director Chloé Zhao, tells the story of Shakespeare’s marriage to Agnes and the devastating death of their son Hamnet—the tragedy that would inspire the playwright to create HAMLET. It’s a narrative built on historical fragments and imaginative reconstruction, yet Mescal believes it captures something essential about the creation of one of literature’s greatest works.
“This book and this script and this film is the closest thing to me that makes sense out of how we got the play HAMLET,” Mescal explained. “It’s fiction, but to me it feels like almost a documentary in terms of how do we make sense out where this piece of art came from.” This perspective reveals something crucial about Mescal’s approach to his craft—his ability to find documentary-like truth in fictional narratives, the same quality that made his portrayal of a grieving father in AFTERSUN so devastatingly authentic.
The project came to life through Mescal’s own advocacy. After reading O’Farrell’s novel, originally published in Canada as “Hamnet and Judith,” he convinced Zhao to take on the adaptation. This kind of creative initiative marks Mescal as more than just a performer; he’s becoming a curator of meaningful cinema, someone who recognizes stories worth telling and has the clout to see them realized.
HAMNET had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival before arriving at TIFF, where it’s already generating Oscar buzz. Much of that attention focuses on Jessie Buckley’s portrayal of Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife—a woman who has remained largely invisible in historical accounts despite being central to the playwright’s emotional life. Buckley, who has performed in multiple Shakespeare plays including THE TEMPEST, THE WINTER’S TALE, and ROMEO AND JULIET, brings a unique understanding to the role.
“He’s such a potent spectre in a lot of our lives and never really has been explored to see who the woman might be behind his language and the world that he creates,” Buckley reflected. Her performance promises to illuminate the mysterious figure who lived alongside literature’s most celebrated writer, and she believes the role will influence any future Shakespearean work she undertakes: “Having touched the edges of what that might be, I think if I was ever to play another great female Shakespearean character, she’d definitely be in the bloodstream somewhere there.”
For Mescal, HAMNET represents another bold choice in a career defined by emotional intelligence and artistic risk-taking. From the intimate grief of AFTERSUN to the epic scale of GLADIATOR II, and now to the intimate historical drama of HAMNET, he continues to seek projects that explore the deepest human experiences. His belief that HAMNET feels like a documentary speaks to his commitment to finding truth in storytelling, even when—perhaps especially when—the historical record remains silent.
As scholars know, Shakespeare did have a son named Hamnet who died before HAMLET was written, but there’s no definitive record of how one influenced the other. That gap in history becomes fertile ground for imagination, and in Mescal’s hands, that imagination becomes a vehicle for exploring how art emerges from the most profound personal losses. It’s exactly the kind of project that suits an actor who has made his reputation by finding the universal in the deeply personal, turning every performance into an exploration of what it means to be human.
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