Paul Mescal Tapped to Play William Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet

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Paul Mescal Tapped to Play William Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet

Paul Mescal has been cast as William Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet.

Per Vogue, Mescal will play the iconic playwright in Zhao’s Hamnet, which is an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name.

The film, which was announced in April 2023, will also star Fargo’s Jessie Buckley. Mescal was previously rumored to be involved with the film, with his casting having now been confirmed.

“That book – it’s just devastating,” Mescal said. “I can’t wait. If I told a younger version of myself that this would be [shooting] this year, I wouldn’t believe it. I’ve obviously been in a film with Jessie before but we’ve never shared the screen or a working process together. I think she’s one of our present-day greats. And Chloé is somebody I can’t wait to get in the weeds with, and get into the heads of those characters.”

Buckley and Mescal both starred in 2023’s The Lost Daughter, which was directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

What is Hamnet about?

The synopsis for O’Farrell’s novel reads, “England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on. A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.”

Zhao — known for directing 2017’s The Rider, 2020’s Nomadland, and 2021’s Eternals — wrote the screenplay for Hamnet with O’Farrell. The movie does not yet have a release date.