Hamnet Author’s Journey from Question to Novel to Movie

When you learned that Chloé Zhao was going to direct Hamnet, what did you think?

I was really thrilled. I’d seen all her films and I knew instinctively that she wouldn’t make a conventional costume-y costume drama, which I never wanted any adaptation of Hamnet to be. Even now I get a little thrilled when I see how filthy Jessie’s fingernails are in the film. I love that. I also knew that she came from a background and a culture that isn’t necessarily steeped in Shakespeare. That was very refreshing to me, because I knew she wasn’t going to make an adoring, idolatrous film with Shakespeare center stage.

How did you end up co-writing the screenplay with Zhao and what was the process like?

When I heard that she wanted me to collaborate on the screenplay, my initial feeling was that I didn’t want to do it. I had already moved on to a different book. I’d never written a screenplay and I felt this was not for me. We got on a Zoom call together during which I was all prepared to tell her, “I’m very flattered, thanks so much, but I’m not going to do it, so the best of luck to you.” Chloé’s a very persuasive person. I’m not quite sure what happened, but I think maybe she put a spell on me. By the end of the Zoom call, I shut my laptop, saying, “Yes, absolutely, we’ll collaborate. I’ll send you a first pass of the script in a month or two.” I was quite surprised. When I walked back into the kitchen, my husband said, “How did she take it?” “Oh, well, I’m actually doing it,” I told him. I’m very glad that I did.

How was the experience of writing your first screenplay?

I know how to construct a narrative on the page and in prose, but I didn’t really have much sense of how that would translate to the screen. Chloé proved to be a very good guide. The first conversation we had was about what we needed to take away from the book. The first thing you have to do is to distill some 350 pages into a 90-page screenplay. It’s a process of just stripping back, and stripping back, and stripping back, to get to the very pith of the story.

We also had to rearrange the chronology. The book moves back and forth from the time when Hamnet and Judith get ill to various points in their lives. That’s fine on the page, but it doesn’t translate well to the screen. Chloé had a very good sense of what she wanted. She knew which parts of the book she wanted to translate onto the screen and what would not work. It was a very collaborative process all the way through.