Jessie Buckley - 'Hamnet'

0:00This podcast is brought to you by Netflix, presenting Frankenstein. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Supporting Actor Jacob Elordi, the New York Times calls it stunning the movie Guillermo del Toro was born to make. Nominated for three Actor Awards, including Jacob Elordi, who gives the most transformative performance of the year. Winner of four Critics' Choice Awards for the outstanding artistry behind the hair and makeup, costumes, and production design, Frankenstein, for your awards consideration.

0:39Hi, everyone, and thank you for tuning in to the 629th episode of the Hollywood Reporters Awards Chatter Podcast. I'm the host, Scott Feinberg, and my guest today is a young Irish stage and screen actress who has been described by sight and sound as born to be a star. By The Observer as one of the most exciting actors of her generation, by The Guardian as reliably excellent, by Vanity Fair as possessing both dazzling charisma and a remarkable authenticity, and by Interview Magazine as one of Hollywood's brightest stars, capable of delivering performances that burn hot and contain multitudes. The New York Times, for its part, has noted that she has a reputation for playing complicated roles with devastating power, Adding, few other actresses of her generation can gain access to such a wide spectrum of emotions or seem as willing to risk being disliked for exploring the tougher ones.

1:32Jesse Buckley Over just a decade on the big screen, Buckley has already given a host of memorable performances. She earned particular acclaim for her work in 2018's Wild Rose, in which she played a Scottish ex-con who dreams of being a country music star, and for which she received a Best Actress BAFTA Award nomination, 2021's The Lost Daughter, in which she played a young academic feeling conflicted about motherhood, and for which she received Best Supporting Actress, BAFTA, Spirit, and Oscar noms. 2022's Women Talking, in which she played one of the women in a Mennonite community who debate what to do after discovering that the community's men had been drugging and raping them, and for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Critics' Choice Award nom, and she and her castmates received a Best Ensemble Actor Award nom.

2:18and, most recently, 2025's Hamnet, in which she plays Anya Shakespeare, the wife of William and mother of their three children, and for which she has already won Golden Globe, Critics' Choice, and BAFTA awards, and is nominated for Best Ensemble and Best Actress Actor awards, as well as the Best Actress Oscar, which she is widely expected to win. Indeed, Rolling Stone, in its review of Hamnet, wrote, They will be talking about Jesse Buckley's performance for years. Over the course of a conversation at the Kempton Canary Hotel in Santa Barbara, the 36-year-old and I discussed how she wound up at just 17 as a finalist on a BBC talent show, and how that, in turn, led her to relocate to London, where she ultimately was accepted at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, what she learned from early jobs in the theater alongside the likes of Dame Judi Dench, and how she then moved into screen acting, how her hamnet performance was shaped by her prior filmmaking experiences, including a film that she shot right before Hamnet but that won't be released until March 6th, The Bride, Maggie Gyllenhaal's reimagining of Bride of Frankenstein, plus much more.

3:28And so without further ado, let's go to that conversation.

3:40Jesse, thank you so much for doing the podcast. Great to have you. And on this one, we go back to the beginning and go through the major twists and turns of a life. So can you just share for us where you were born and raised and what your folks did for a living? I was born in Cork, which is the county next to where I grew up. I grew up in Killarney, which is this beautiful town on the west coast of Ireland, surrounded by lakes and mountains. And the beginning of my life, I lived in the shed behind my dad's guest house. Me and my brother and my mom and dad lived in the shed. One bed rambling around this guest house.

4:21And yeah. And I guess I cut you off before you could tell about your folks, but like I think it related to where you lived, right, at times. Were they running, it was almost like a hotel? It was a guest house, yeah. Yeah, it was like 28 rooms and it was kind of an exotic place to grow up, you know, because you get these people from outside of your world come in. Like me and my family were reminiscing the other day about what this guest house would bring in. And I remember at one point there was this American barbershop that arrived and I can still remember the song they were singing. It was I like coffee, I like tea.

5:00I like the java java and it likes me. Coffee and tea, the java me. a gob a gob and they used to practice like in the back for hours and me and my brother would sit and watch and then you know we'd kind of be part of serving and making the beds and yeah it was a really kind of a bit like an Alice in Wonderland place but it was also a job and there's a lot of guest house in that in my hometown because it's it's kind of like a national park yeah so my My parents worked very hard, you know. I remember them working very, very hard. Now, we just got an awesome sampling of your beautiful voice. Now, that may run in the family as well.

5:43Is that a vocal talent? Is that the case? I mean, what was your mom's other focus? Well, my mom is a musician. She now works as a music psychotherapist for people in palliative care and children in palliative care. But when we were young, and she still is a harpist and a singer. And actually, she wanted to be an opera singer. And I think when I was a tiny baby, she had gone to London to try and become an opera singer in London. And we lived in this convent in Roehampton in London, because obviously every Irish family has a nun in their family. And I remember she'd go off to do the workshops in Covent Garden and I'd be looked after the nuns.

6:24And my dad did some, you know, waiting around London. And her singing and how she performed was such a, it's like in the essence of what I've understood and always tried to reach for in telling stories and needing to tell a story as a way of emancipating something in yourself that you probably don't even understand what it is. But I have such a strong memory of seeing her sing in church and really feeling like it was essential to her. And then that this kind of mercurial, strange conversation happened between her, the story and the congregation and strangers where how she sang would touch people so much that these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes and want to like say thank you.

7:21And I really viscerally, physically remember seeing that. And that was probably the beginning of me going, whatever that is, I want to do that. And I wonder, was it, it's really interesting that you've kind of identified that. Because I guess, could it just as easily have been that you focused on singing as much as acting? I know you've done both, but like, do you think it was, it was just sort of being drawn to performing of some sort or it could have, and it could have gone in any direction? I honestly never thought I would be just an actress. I never in a million years thought I'd make a movie.

8:01Like that was something that did not belong to my life. Even with all the greats, you know, Maureen O 'Hara and all these guys, it wasn't, it seemed like a... No, that was like a fairy tale. You know, nobody gets to do that. and nobody really I mean my parents in the most incredible way and I'm the eldest of five you know every single one of us they've always given us a gift that life is to be experienced in whatever shape you want it to take and money isn't definitive of a passion and I think for me because I was exposed to music and probably you know but I was also very early exposed to theater and musical theater because there was an amateur dramatics company in my hometown.

8:47And I really remember going to see my first play and seeing them do Jesus Christ Superstar. And I was probably intimidated by just language because it did feel like something that somebody very intelligent and very beautiful like Marilyn Monroe could be part of. And I thought music had the capacity to hold the amount of feeling I felt inside me when I was a kid until I met Shakespeare. Well, I'm going to pause you because before we get there, I mean, I guess, you know, from what I've read, you started like a lot of kids at a very young age in school things and maybe some summer programs and stuff.

9:30But it sounds like, as you know, you're saying your parents were saying do what calls you. But the idea of maybe going, you know, applying to drama school, for instance, and making that that this is going to be the path you want to go down in life. Was that what were the people around you? Maybe not only your family, but teachers, others were people saying, like, obviously, Jesse's going to do this and you should do this. Or was it not that? No, they were. I mean, largely people really encouraged me. And especially my parents. There was never a you should do something safe option. I think they saw how much this meant to me and where I would go when I would do it even at such a young age.

10:17Obviously, a few people would probably be like, but just make sure you get all your exams. And I found school incredibly stressful. Like I just couldn't learn linearly like that and formulaically. I mean, my mind is wild. Which is great for what you do do. Yeah. But in school, you know, my teachers in school, in the school that I went to, there was a lot of incredible music. And we did a production every year and they were really supportive of that. And yeah. Well, so, you know, there are these kinds of fork in the road moments in people's lives. And it seems like one of the ones that we have to talk about is when you first applied or auditioned or whatever for drama school.

11:04Can you take me into the maybe it sounds like 48 hours around that and just what what went down, good and bad? Well, first to like like preface it, I used to like watch on repeat Judy Dench's Send in the Clowns like a hundred thousand times. time why that specifically it's just amazing if you haven't watched you should watch it the one where it's like in the albert hall and it's a kind of it's a sondheim event and it's such a powerful performance it's very such a simple performance and she just sits on a stool and there's a spotlight and i might be wrong but i think she might have just lost her husband around that time and you just see somebody distill themselves down to the rawness of their own humanity inside the vessel of a story and at times you think she's not going to survive you can also see her like reaching out like there's a journey that's happening beyond herself and I couldn't kind of understand it I just wanted to do that I it was so pure I think I'd like heard that she'd gone to one of these drama schools, Mount Viewer, or she was a patron of it or something like that.

12:23And also Guildford, which were the two kind of best musical theatre drama schools in the UK. I applied and I went over to do the audition. And my first audition was at Guildford School of Music and Drama. That was the one I really wanted to go to. And they wouldn't let me in. They tell you right away? They told me right away, yeah, yeah. So that was kind of crushing. Yeah, it broke my heart. But those moments are really important because I think you kind of, you begin to have a conversation with yourself about, it's a long journey. It's a marathon of your life. It's not something that just instantaneously happens.

13:08And they were absolutely right not to let me in. Why do you say that? Because I wasn't ready. And it wasn't probably meant to be for me. musical theatre like just that it was the beginning of of a life lesson which are imperative things to learn as a human but as an actor you know if you don't have real life happening to you and everybody's just saying well done come on in you're amazing then what are you like working against or working through to grow so it crushed me and I had another audition for Mountview coming up the following weekend but on the weekend that I didn't get into Guilford there was an open audition for a tv talent show called I'd do anything which was looking for somebody to play Nancy in a West End production of Oliver Twist and Andrew Lloyd Webber was involved and Cameron McIntosh and Barry Humphreys and I joined the queue for that on the weekend that I didn't get into Guilford to kind of practice for my Mountview audition that was coming up with no expectation at all and I ended up coming second well I want to break this down because I mean so this is 2008 you are 17 at that point I don't know if the whole process was was on the BBC but it was you know over the course of 12 weeks right and yeah I'm seeing it starts with thousands right comes down to 5 ,000, comes down to 12, comes down to two, which is incredible that, you know, to be in the two.

14:48And by the way, I just, I wasn't familiar with the program at the time. What have you been doing with your life? No, but you know what? I was talking about you with somebody this week who's a big fan, and they said the first time you were on their radar was when you did The Man That Got Away on that, you sang that on that show. And I don't know where in the process, in the course of the winnowing it down to two that was, but I did go and watch it today, and it's amazing. And especially, you're only 17, and the maturity and the singing with feeling and all that. So I guess on the one hand, to get to the final two must have felt like that's an incredible achievement.

15:26But on the other hand, you've said, looking back, that you came away from that whole process rather depressed. And so I wonder what, and that's not no judgment, I just am wondering what was it about that moment in time where, you know, you get knocked down with not getting into drama school. You get to do this. Your people are a lot of people who know what they're talking about. Andrew Lightweber and Cameron McIntosh and these guys are taking an interest in you and seem to even be perhaps rooting for you. But you, was it just kind of hard to feel the love or what was it? I don't think I was depressed because of the show.

16:05And I think depression is a bit of a, I've used that word in a way to protect myself. But I think it's a bit general around what I was experiencing outside of what that show was, which was a woman discovering herself, a young woman discovering her body, being out in a world. and really asking questions about who she was, what she wanted to say, what her mind thought about things, what she was going to offer into her world, not from an idea of what it is to be accepted by a world, but actually really from the inside of herself. And for me, that was a very uncomfortable moment of self-discovery.

16:48And there were moments of huge lows and huge highs, and also in a very public space. And I imagine maybe even away from, was your family throughout this whole time able to be with you in London or were they back in? They were back at home because my mom had just had a baby. So she was, you know, she was, they were kind of over and back, but I was definitely in a new space. And actually that was a gift because there was part of that experience. And in the best way, you know, I was getting to peek behind the curtain, like I thought I would at least have to be 50 to be allowed to be peek behind the curtain in the smallest way and all of a sudden I was doing the thing I was like doing the thing that I saw my mom do that I experienced when I saw my first ever play I was like part of it and I was a lot and for that was extraordinary to me I mean I do that every single day of my life I was very raw you know I was very raw with my feelings at that time and I was really I had no structure or technique around me and I was in this new city which was incredibly exciting because I could kind of reinvent myself and I did like I would walk around that city and adopt a character that I would see on the street and buy hats and if somebody said you want to come through that door I'd be like yeah sure what's in that door and sometimes that was dangerous and I probably shouldn't have gone through that door but it was a real moment of discovery and you know I like I've become a mom recently and and the thing that I am that's reminded me in becoming a mom the word that it has reminded me of is is awe and awe isn't just like bliss you know it's actually quite a vulnerable state because you're you're in such discovery and in many moments of my life I've had felt that like rawness of discovery and of awe and that was definitely a moment of that and I look at that young woman I think you are so brave like I don't know if I would be able to do that now in in such an open-hearted way.

19:05I hope I would, but I don't know. But in her kind of ignorance and passion, I stepped into a space that was wide open and felt all the feelings around that. And I'm very proud of that young woman. Yeah, no, you should be. And though you didn't, I guess, get to be a part of Oliver, which was the, this was the prize there. I guess the upside was that, I don't know if it's both Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron McIntosh, but it seems like there was enough interest and confidence in you that there was, I mean, how did Radha enter the picture? Well, Radha entered the picture from Cameron McIntosh and Andrew, I would, you know, in a different way, but with Radha, it was Cameron and in such an incredible, generous act.

19:55After I finished doing the show, he offered to send me to do a Shakespeare workshop in Radha for four weeks during the summer. Now this is not something he's just doing for every contestant he did it because he took a he saw something in you? Yeah I guess he wanted to like nurture something he saw in me and I had done Shakespeare at school but with distance and kind of intimidation and again it was too formulaic I couldn't get into it and I went and it changed my life and it changed how I saw myself it was a moment that I really recognized myself as an actress because the power of his words were bottomless you know I thought I music was my only experience of something to like fill the fire that I felt inside me until I'd met Shakespeare and his words which were just like liquid lava.

21:00And this wasn't though I think we should make it clear to folks because you did attend and graduate from Radha but this wasn't this was there was a interregnum or whatever people say in between this four-week introduction to this right exposure to it and then going back 2010 to 2013 what so I guess at that point you've now discovered this other that that this is a part of you you want to continue to explore but what happened in that intervening period what the hell were you doing

21:36i don't know i was walking through doors god that's good that's good i was doing lots of stuff it actually was a great time of my life like i did my first ever job which was a little night music in the Menier Chocolate Factory with Maureen Lippman, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Hansen. Hannah actually reminds me often recently that she told me to pick up my costume off the floor which is very good life lesson and it was you know that was such a beautiful first job because this group of people gathered around me and again I really had no ground underneath me and I would like kick myself at the end of the night if I felt I hadn't touched the void.

22:34And you though after that four weeks at Radha had pretty soon after actually moved to London? I never moved back to Ireland after did I do anything once I was there I just ended up there stuck around so it never like I never like it was never a big move but yeah that cast you know Maureen Lippmann would like bring me up to her house and she'd teach me how to read a play together and very very kind but also at that time we'd gotten free membership for the Ivy Club which was like I thought I was Barbra Streisand and we got given these like drinks called twinkles which is basically like the green juice you know magic bottle in wick in wicked you know be very careful of the twinkles but these nights it was like something from the like 1930s or 50s they these nights would erupt and we'd be in this ivy club and there's this amazing jazz piano player called joe thompson who who played there and you know we'd be up on the tables singing cabaret like people would be dancing Kate Moss would walk in and she'd grab the microphone off me and it was really vibrant and Joe Thompson then because I used to say I used to sing the man that got away that was like mine was singing at the piano and then he was like oh do you want to actually do something together so in my interim years of of Radha I became a kind of jazz singer we got like a residency in Annabelle's which is this kind of underground club old members club in in Mayfair where nobody listened to me at all thank god and it was full of like Russian mafia and prostitutes and I was singing jazz and I do my hair in pink curls and and then sometimes we get on a train and go up to a theater up in Lower Stoft which is on the edge of the earth and there'd be two people in the audience and we'd take the lid off the piano and we'd like sing to them.

24:38And it was amazing, you know, like it was really alive and young and curious. I was so curious, you know, I would have done anything. And the fact though, that you were able to go back to Radha as a full-fledged three-year student, was that something that, I mean, I remember in reading as much as I could about you before this, seeing something about, again, something about you like inspired belief in somebody else to kind of support those dreams? Was there, there was somebody that really kind of helped to make it possible? Yeah. You know, I, I, I'm from a family of five and it's, my parents always did their best, but you know, kind of when you're out, you're out.

25:23You're on your own, Chad. And I love that responsibility, but it's hard to, I mean it's hard to like live in a city like London and be able to afford it and in those moments in the Ivy Club there was a man called Tony who had seen me sing and he loved theatre and he wanted to support young talent and also I think when I had done that first course at RADA it had been an itch that hadn't been fully scratched and I'd gone and had a bit of a life experience you know I'd done many many things worked in markets sang jazz like you know but I wanted to go back and train I wanted to mess up in private I wanted to study scripts I wanted to know what cinema was I wanted to go to the pub on a Friday evening with people my own age and not worry about like that I might go to prison if I didn't pay tax which seemed like terrifying always there I still worry about that and he said I want to help you and he very kindly paid for my training at RADA which and and staying in London which if he didn't I probably wouldn't have been able to stay that's amazing and is he still around yeah yeah that's great that he's gotten to see it bet on the right pony.

26:50Well, so you graduated from Rod in 2013 and it's kind of, you know, again, looking at the good old CV and credits or whatever. I mean, amazing to early jobs in the theater at the Globe, right? My first job, yeah. Henry V with Jude Law, pretty early. Again, like a year out, right? Within the year of being out. And then full circle, I guess, in a way that you're with Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh, not to forget him, in The Winter's Tale, right? And this is all within pretty quickly being out of school. And I just wonder, when you think back to that period, what were you making of it? And would you have been content to spend the rest of your life like that?

27:35Or was there always an ambition to see what was possible in screen acting as well? I don't know if I've ever had like my eyes on the horizon like that. I feel like I kind of arrive where I'm where I'm at and I'm like want to be absolutely there. And those, you know, being I remember like doing Winter's Tale and with Judi Dench. Like for me, my education hadn't finished. And it's one thing being in drama school, but it's another thing being a working actress for real. So like out of kind of fear that I might curse myself in my performances, like every single night I'd run down to the wings when Judi Dench was doing her piece as Paulina and I'd watch her.

28:20And if I never missed it, I would sit and just watch her and, you know, try and be like, come spirits. Judi Dench, come. Were you able to figure out like what makes her so good? I mean she's just deeply human and mischievous and I think do you know why some people are really good and some people aren't I just think she has a river to her to her heart that is in motion and her container you know is gigantic She's someone, though, I think, I believe it's the case, spent the vast majority of her career, or the early parts of it, primarily doing theater, and then had this amazing second and third act of screen acting.

29:15I wonder if even talking to her or others, how you even felt about screen acting. There was a time when people thought, you know, this was like screen acting was the lesser art or whatever. I mean, now I think that's kind of gone, but I just kind of wonder how you regarded it. Was it something that seemed desirable or just whatever happens afterwards? I was definitely curious about it. Yeah. And I definitely remember those early years in London getting kind of possessed by early cinema and going to the BFI and buying like Catherine Hepburn's, like all of her films, watching Philadelphia Story, Spencer Traylor, like old cinema, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis like I there was something about the kind of beginning of it that I just became kind of like curious about and then when I was at RADA you know this librarian James kind of introduced me to Larson Trier and Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves which is the first time I kind of saw Emily Watson and I was probably shy of it like and I think similarly to how I met London for the first time I I remember my agent calling me maybe when I was about 22 or three saying do you want to go to America like do you want to meet some American agents and I said no I'm not ready and I think what I meant by that is like I need to I'm I need to get to know myself in order to meet what that might be I don't want to go and not have something to say in that world.

30:55And that's got to be pretty unusual because most people, my sense is that most people can't wait to get to somebody saying like, hey, do you want to go to America? Do you want to do whatever? So I wonder, that's a level of self-awareness or humility or whatever it is that's, I think, unusual. Well, I guess I don't really know what that means anyway. Like, do you do you want to go to America? Like, what is that? Like, how do you go to America? And I think, you know, I guess I'm looking to react to something. And I still feel the same way with that in the scripts that I choose and the people I work with.

31:35I want like a visceral reaction that feels embodied. I would flounder. I'd get lost. And I have to have an interaction that's real. And I think I'm nothing without like the people that have come before me. Maybe that's why I watched Catherine Hepburn and Judi Dench. You know, they're my stories and my education, how they navigate a space as women is the greatest education I've ever had. And I just hadn't metabolized that yet in myself. But then I do remember the moment I got like that's the script beast. Yes. I guess, you know, those moments are so special and so rare in a career where the alchemy of where you are meets the alchemy of a story.

32:27And where that character was, was and where I was, was such an incredible entry point. And it was such a pure experience making that. And it was Michael Pierce's first film that he did. It was my first film. We were like, there's no money. There is no consequence. You're making art. Should we say for folks listening, you're basically, I don't know, correct me if my memory is not exactly right, but I think it's like a woman haunted by a kind of childhood act or, you know, something that happened when she was in her teens, 13 or something, who gets involved with a... Well, it's a kind of woman, it's a young woman who is, I would say, imprisoned in a life, in a pretty kind of conservative idealism.

33:20And she meets a man who is wild, dangerous, feral, has a monster inside him. And I think she also recognizes there is something monstrous about her existence that is inside her too. And this collision is very intense, but full of life and disobedience and, I guess, ruptures morality. And this was the first screen project that you were sent or that you reacted to or what? I can't remember if it was the first screen project that I was sent, but it was definitely the first script that I got sent that I became like obsessed with. And I mean, auditioning is always kind of vulnerable. I actually have always enjoyed auditioning and have a feeling towards that like if something has meaning to you what a gift to go as far as you can in that in that process and stand in front of these people and say here's my heart and it's kind of out of your hands whether that's the heart they want or not but at least you've like given it your but with this I like I've had a few moments of that with scripts where I'm like I'd read that Marion Cotier had kept the script of I think Rustin Bone under her bed and with this I put Beast under my bed until I'd got the part and they well and that though I guess the first thing of yours on screen that anyone saw was War and Peace yeah this was but then that was a tell like limited series this was your first film but what's amazing is War and Peace came out in 2016 Beast came out in 2017 the amount of stuff that I'm going to have to now rush through and cover, try to cover of all the work that you've done has all been in the last decade.

35:17You've packed in a lot, right? It's kind of when you think about, I mean, have you kind of realized how much has happened in 10 years? And that you're getting old. No, no, no. Well, I want to obviously focus most on Hamnet, but I do want to maybe we can just briefly touch. I'll ask you for a thought or two or something that stands out most about some of these other milestones along the way. So we said Beast was the first film in 2017. The next year, though, is the one that seems to have even more landed you on the radar of a lot of people, including BAFTA, which nominated you as one of their rising stars of that year.

35:58And I think the British Independent Film Award said, you know, best newcomer. and a lot of attention for Wild Rose, which was 2018 directed by Tom Harper, who had done War and Peace, right, with you. So this is a Scottish mother out released from prison, who has dreams of being a country music star, but also has reality. And I think for a lot of people, the first opportunity to see you sing outside of the talent show. Just for that one, what stands out most when you think back to that one? I guess it was my first mother. I've played like quite a few mothers, haven't I? Disobedient, naughty mothers.

36:38And the kind of struggle of that role when you also want to be in the world. Again, it was a very small film, but it was surrounded by these incredible musicians. And I think country music actually also, it was such an amazing thing to study because, you know, the great country music singers like John Prine and Townsend Sant and Emmylou Harris and Bonnie Raitt, who was like a huge thing for me during this. Their stories are about every man, every woman and our struggle. And it's so simple. There's no flounce. It really is distilled down to the essence of how you just be alive and love with a kind of weight on your back.