Hamnet: First Look At The Film Adaptation Of Maggie O’Farrell’s Award Winning Novel

In recent years Irish star Paul Mescal has risen from his breakout television role as Connell Waldron in the acclaimed adaptation of Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel Normal People, all the way to the lofty heights of Ridley Scott’s much-anticipated Gladiator sequel in the leading role. In between he has gathered a plethora of acclaimed credits, with his eyes firmly trained on independent cinema and the stage. With The History of Sound, Merrily We Roll Along an Sam Mendes four-part Beatles biopic all coming up, his relevance is going no where. Next up is an incredibly storied role indeed: Mescal will be playing the bard himself, William Shakespeare, in the film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s beloved 2020 novel, Hamnet, which bagged the Women’s Prize for Fiction later that year. Here’s everything we know so far.

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Paul Mescal stars as William Shakespeare in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release. (Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC)

Hamnet Adaptation: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

Maggie O’Farrell is a highly acclaimed novelist, but her 2020 novel Hamnet especially struck a chord, telling the tale of William Shakespeare’s oft forgotten son who died age eleven in 1596, and whose legacy of grief is thought to imbue many of the bard’s plays after the fact. The work was adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and Lolita Chakrabarti, first showing at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Swan Theatre in April 2023 before being transferred to the Garrick Theatre in London in September of the same year.

Ajani Cabey (Hamnet) and Alex Jarrett (Judith) in the stage version of Hamnet. (© Manuel Harlan)

‘I think [Chakrabarti’s] done an amazing job,’ O’Farrell told C&TH last year. ‘It was an extraordinary phone call to get, certainly. I remember my agent calling me up and saying, “The Royal Shakespeare Company have been in touch and are thinking of making a play of Hamnet”. And we had this conversation back and forth about what it meant and what it would be like, and at the end of the conversation there was a long pause and she said, “So, do you want to say yes?”. And I said, “Oh, sorry, yes! Did I not say? Definitely! Yes please!”.’

From the stage to the screen: a film adaptation of Hamnet is coming later this year, after being announced in April 2023, just after the stage premiere. Directed by Chloé Zhao, O’Farrell worked on the screenplay while big names like Sam Mendes and Steven Spielberg are attached on the producing side.

Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn as Bartholomew in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release. (Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC)

What Is Hamnet About?

Hamnet tells the story of the death of 11-year-old Hamnet, the son of history’s most famous playwright William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes Hathaway, as well as twin brother to Judith and younger brother to Susanna.

Hamnet died during an outbreak of the bubonic plague when he was 11 years old in 1596, the trauma of which is thought to have inspired the writing of Shakespeare’s famed play, Hamlet. Thought to have been written between 1599 and 1601, Hamlet (interchangeable with ‘Hamnet’ at the time) is considered a farewell from the bard to his son – a play in which the father dies instead of the son. But the father’s grief crops up in many of Shakespeare’s subsequent works, who notably moved away from his famed comedies in the wake of his son’s death, turning to his acclaimed major tragedies. Plays thought to draw on Shakespeare’s grief include King John, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night, which centres on a girl who believes her twin brother has perished in a shipwreck. The climactic scene in King Lear – when the ruined monarch laments the death of his favourite daughter – is also thought to draw on the bard’s real feelings.

Jacobi Jupe stars as Hamnet, Bodhi Rae Breathnach as Susanna and Olivia Lynes as Judith in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release. (Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC)

Maggie O’Farrell’s novel also traces the love story of Hamnet’s parents: natural healer Agnes and Latin tutor William, as well as the latter’s move to London and rise to acclaim as a playwright. Set primarily in Stratford as it was in the late 16th century (leafy and distant from the city), we can expect rural accents from both leading Irish stars, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. Watch the trailer below for an idea of the action.

‘That book – it’s just devastating,’ Mescal told Vogue on the news of his casting in January 2024. ‘I can’t wait. If I told a younger version of myself that this would be [shooting] this year, I wouldn’t believe it.’

As for the visual aesthetic, Hamnet‘s cinematography is being led by Oscar and BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Łukasz Żal, who has previously worked on Ida (2014), Cold War (2018) and Jonathan Glazer’s acclaimed Polish-language historical drama The Zone of Interest (2023).

Paul Mescal stars as William Shakespeare in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release. (Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC)

The Cast

Opposite Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare will be Jessie Buckley as his wife, Agnes Hathaway. While Mescal is best known for Normal People (2020), Aftersun (2022) and Gladiator II (2024), Buckley rose to fame on BBC talent show I’d Do Anything (2008); she has since starred in big-hitting TV series Chernobyl (2019) and Fargo (2020), as well as in films including I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020), Women Talking (2022) and Wicked Little Letters (2023).

They will be joined by rising child star Jacobi Jupe in the titular role, along with Olivia Lynes as his twin sister Judith and Bodhi Rae Breathnach (soon to star in Sense and Sensibility) as his older sister Susanna. Joe Alwyn and Emily Watson also star in the supporting cast.

The full cast we know is as follows:

• Jessie Buckley as Agnes Shakespeare
• Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare
• Joe Alwyn as Bartholomew
• Emily Watson as Mary Shakespeare, William’s mother
• Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet
• Olivia Lynes as Judith
• Bodhi Rae Breathnach as Susanna
• Jack Shalloo as Marcellus
• David Wilmot as John

‘I’ve obviously been in a film with Jessie before [in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter] but we’ve never shared the screen or a working process together,’ Mescal told Vogue at the start of 2024. ‘I think she’s one of our present-day greats. And Chloé [Zhao, the director] is somebody I can’t wait to get in the weeds with, and get into the heads of those characters.’

Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release. (Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC)

Release Date

Hamnet will be released in US cinemas on 27 November 2025 after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September. It’s a slightly longer wait here in the UK: Hamnet is expected to be released in the UK and Ireland on 9 January 2026.