Alison Stewart: You are listening to All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. This week, we are counting down the days until the 98th Academy Awards. They're happening this Sunday. A quiet film that focuses on the way we each experience grief, Hamnet, is nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director, Chloé Zhao. This was her first time adapting a novel. Zhao described the process as like an hourglass, beginning with Maggie O'Farrell's original book and distilling it piece by piece and then allowing it to expand again for the cinema.

Chloé Zhao joined me to talk about the movie which follows William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway as simply Will and Agnes. They are a young married couple who find a lot of joy in each other. Agnes is considered a bit odd around town. She's gifted with special foresight and has a deep connection with the forest, but Will appreciates what makes her her. Soon they have three children, Judith, Susanna and Hamnet. When young Hamnet dies without Will being there, Agnes is left alone with her grief. Will channels his pain into a new play. I think you can guess what that play might be. Here's my conversation with the Oscar-nominated director of Hamnet, Chloé Zhao.

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Thank you for being here.

Chloé Zhao: Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: When you first read Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, what impressed you about it the most?

Chloé Zhao: I love the world building. I love the little intimate little moments of everyday life, domesticity, but also how grand and cosmic it feels, because the way he connects the characters to nature and to the world that's unseen.

Alison Stewart: You had a very interesting working relationship with Maggie. [chuckles] Tell us a little bit about how--

Chloé Zhao: Define interesting.

Alison Stewart: Interesting meaning like interesting, like it's like, oh, you can work that way. [chuckles] She would have an idea, she would send it to you. Would you explain that for our audience?

Chloé Zhao: I think it's the other way around. I would have an idea, and I would send her voice notes.

Alison Stewart: Voice notes, okay.

Chloé Zhao: She tells the story better. She would wake up in Scotland, and her phone will go off, and there will be many, many voice notes from me. I don't talk linearly. I tend to talk in a spiral shape. I'll talk, and I think, and I'll get to a place, and I'll just stop. [chuckles] Then the point will show up, but I don't always go in knowing what I'm going to say. It's a feeling, an intuition. They're long, and I believe there was one time, it was 58 minutes long, and her daughter walked in and said, "What podcast are you listening to?" [chuckles] She said, "It's Chloé, I'm taking notes. Shh."

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] You had a 58 minute?

Chloé Zhao: I didn't know it was 58 minutes. Felt like five minutes to me.

Alison Stewart: Well, you had something to say.

Chloé Zhao: I guess so.

Alison Stewart: That's so interesting. You took a 58-minute voice message, and you gave it to her. It could be a 2 minute, 58 minute, whatever it was, whatever voice message you sent to her. What did she do with that?

Chloé Zhao: That, I'm not sure. [laughs] I think she has a notebook. She takes notes, and then she tried to do what I asked her to explore. It's like I have a seed, and she puts in her garden, and in her greenhouse, and she comes back not with the final product, but with a seedling strong enough, right? Then I plant it, water it, put the compost on my cast and crew, and occasionally, I bring it back to the greenhouse with her, and go like, "Maybe it wants a companion plant with something else you know that I don't." She's my bridge to the wild forest beyond the garden. That's her world. I don't have access to that.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn about the way you write a novel that you didn't know before, because now you had to take this novel, you've read, you liked, you loved, and you had to turn it into a film?

Chloé Zhao: Like the process of adapting a novel that I didn't know before?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Alison Stewart: I've never adopted a novel, so it's my first time. Nomadland was non-fiction. It was a journalistic piece, so it's the first time I adopted a novel. I guess this is what I learned that [chuckles] I haven't learned it before. Maggie described the process like an hourglass. The sand, it sort of get distilled to the central, the little neck of the hourglass. That's what we do when we take the sand of the novel, we allow it to distill it down to this little shape, and then allow the filmmaking process to expand it again. So much is about taking things out and be very clear of everything in the novel. The novel is about so many things. What is the path we want to walk back to the forest? We have to choose one path, and sometimes that means letting go some sceneries, really beautiful ones.

Alison Stewart: Yes. My guest is Chloé Zhao. We are talking about her film, Hamnet. In your research, what did you want to know about William and Agnes?

Chloé Zhao: My research really started when I found my cast, because Maggie already done her research, and her book is her interpretation to that research. I, myself, don't need more than that, but my job is to how to take that, that is written on a page has a different quality when it comes to time, because when something is written, it's written in the past, a script.

My job is to take that character that exists in the past. Not past, because it's Shakespearean, but it's written a month ago, a day ago, but bring that character to the present moment, allow the camera to capture that character existing in the present moment. That's my job. Half of that character will show us who they are through our actors, moment to moment. My research is on the day. It's almost like the research happens all the time until we say cut at the end of the day.

Alison Stewart: You always knew that you wanted Jessie Buckley for this part.

Chloé Zhao: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What skills does she have that you knew that she would be your Agnes?

Chloé Zhao: Beyond being an actress, she's a storyteller. She's an artist herself, and she has that same compulsion to create in order to survive in this world the way Shakespeare does, just her language is a bit different. I knew she's going to be able to create Agnes' language for me, because Agnes had a different language to create the way Shakespeare did. That is a language we have forgotten, and Jessie is looking for that lost language as an artist, as an actress, and also as a woman.

Alison Stewart: She also has a beautiful singing voice.

Chloé Zhao: Yes. [chuckles] I actually didn't know these things when I thought of her. I had not seen Wild Rose. Then once I cast her, I started to watch more of her films, and I saw that film. "Oh, wow, you can sing." Then I recently discovered not only she could sing, she was singing at really epic events, and singing competitions, things like that.

Alison Stewart: She sat in that chair and sang practically acapella, and we were blown away.

Chloé Zhao: Really?

Alison Stewart: It was amazing.

Chloé Zhao: Wow. Yes, try to get her to sing lately, "Just sing something." She's like, "No, I'm too shy. Too shy." [chuckles] Yes, her voice is amazing.

Alison Stewart: In the book, and in the movie, she has a special quality about her.

Chloé Zhao: Yes.

Alison Stewart: She's got like a sixth sense. It's almost witchy in the best way. How did you and Jessie talk about this special sense and what it would mean for her character?

Chloé Zhao: The word witch, the meaning has been quite misunderstood. There's a lot of projection for tens of thousands of years on that word, because what is a weather witch, for example? It's just somebody who's taken their time to watch the weather, who are a bit more sensitive to the changing temperatures, and who has an intuition with animals. Really, it's just a level of sensitivity. Then they see patterns, and they recognize these patterns, and then they can "predict" the weather, and it's same. All of us, our bodies are designed to speak that language, but modern life does shut down that sensitivity. [laughs] I love your face right now.

Alison Stewart: I was like, "Yes." [laughs]

Chloé Zhao: Particularly for women, we were born more so with that sensitivity, and that's our power. I understand why it was considered dangerous because it's extremely powerful. That's the language of Agnes. For her to have this sensitivity, this intuition about him, to have a vision about him. In many, many cultures around the world, vision is considered a feminine quality, and then the masculine quality can go out there and make the vision become true. That's within all of us. We have intuition. We have action within all of us.

Unfortunately, the intuition part is missing, so we keep going out there, and act, and act, and build, and conquer, but we sometimes forget why are we doing this. It's really satisfying for me and Jessie. We talk about a lot like, how can we-- even while making the film, try to make the film in the language of Agnes, not worry too much about logic, and about knowing everything, about controlling everything, and just allow the mystery to guide us half of the time.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a scene from Hamnet. This is Agnes talking to her son about what she sees in his future.

[MOVIE - Hamnet: Chloé Zhao]

Agnes: Show me your hand.

Hamnet: What do you see?

Agnes: I see you, grown and very strong. I see you in London working with your father.

Hamnet: In the theater?

Agnes: At the playhouse.

Hamnet: What will I be doing?

Agnes: What do you wish to do, Hamnet?

Hamnet: I should be one of the players with a sword.

Agnes: Sword?

Hamnet: Yes, and I shall clash it against the sword of the other player.

Agnes: Show me.

Hamnet: There'll be a terrible fight, and everybody watching will be frightened out of their wits.

Agnes: [laughs] Who will win?

Hamnet: I shall, of course.

Agnes: Of course you shall.

Alison Stewart: That is from Hamnet. My guest is Oscar-winning director, Chloé Zhao. We're talking about her new movie, which she also co-wrote. It follows William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes as they grieve the loss of their young son Hamnet. It's in theaters now. This is also a portrait of a marriage as much as it is a story about motherhood and about grief. What did you want the audience to either understand or to feel about Will and Agnes, and their relationship before the loss?

Chloé Zhao: They're very different. They're different in a way that you understand why they needed each other. He was all about structure, and order, and control. You meet him, he's inside a frame, and his wild animal is locked away. He grew up in an environment that's violent, and not accepting of who he is. He has to only be a certain way to be safe.

Her wildness is on full display, and yet, could be very chaotic and out of control because she had no structure around her. She lost her mother at a young age. She knew the structure that Joan, her stepmother, provided is going to turn her into someone else. She's looking for someone who can hold all of her, and accept her, and see her for who she is. He needed someone to see what he could be, and she needed someone to accept and see her for who she is.

Alison Stewart: You're listening to my conversation with writer-director Chloé Zhao about Hamnet, which is nominated for eight Academy Awards. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's continue my conversation with Chloé Zhao, co-writer and director of Hamnet, which is up for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Here's more of my conversation with Chloé.

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I can't remember if I read it or I saw it, but you said that you were a tantric practitioner, and you did.

Chloé Zhao: I am a level 1, very early in training. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: You use that with your actors, the feminine and the masculine side.

Chloé Zhao: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How did that help you with the relationship and creating those characters?

Chloé Zhao: Well, first thing first, you put them in their bodies. That's where the best acting come from. Then secondly, there's a lot of how people should be. [laughs] We're better now, but we still have different sides of how people should act, what is appropriate, what isn't, but in a safe place, and this is what theater is for. This is what art is for, storytelling is for.

It's for us to show a full spectrum of human condition and experiences, so people, they can see themselves in and not hide anything. To create a container and to allow them to physically embody the energy of their gender self to the full extreme, and giving consent and safety for them to interact with each other physically with those energies.

What happens is that, you have total chaos meeting total order. That's how the universe is created. In nature, these two energies clashing into each other, and harmonizing, and making up with each other, that's how the universe is expanding. It's really beautiful to see them embodying these energies, and then finding how they mold with each other. Then, when you plant that in your actor's body somatically, it doesn't accomplish anything like rehearsing a scene, but when you're shooting, it's going to come out in ways that you would recognize. You go, "Ah, there's that moment. Ah, there's that moment." It's a spiral shape. It's not going from A to B to C to D. It sort of go in circles. Then on a good day, you land on the spot, you go, "That's why we did that." [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: In this movie, you grapple with Will, not necessarily Shakespeare, the man, sort of the iconic writer, you deal with him as a man.

Chloé Zhao: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How hard was that?

Chloé Zhao: Not hard at all, because he's just a man. That's the thing. All of us, all these things that we put on top of us, like names, and accomplishments, and titles, and this and that, but at the end of the day, biologically, we have to eat. [chuckles] We will die. I think that's actually very easy for me.

Alison Stewart: It was interesting, one of our colleagues didn't realize it was Will Shakespeare until it was clear to him. They said it in the film, and I thought that was a good testament to the film.

Chloé Zhao: During test screenings, there were moments when it gets to that last moment and you see people in the audience go, "Oh." I thought, "I don't know if that's a good thing. We need them to know. Let's make sure when we market the film, that it's very clear." [chuckles] Yes, I think it's great that people feel that way even though they know it's him, but it is important that they know it's him because it helps give some tension to the film.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao. We're talking about her new movie, Hamnet. There are two birthing scenes in this movie, and they're very intense in different ways. What did you want to accomplish with those childbirth scenes?

Chloé Zhao: Maggie wrote so beautifully in her book, and I think she feels very passionate about the way that a woman's body, and really all of our bodies have been constrained into how it should behave intellectually or societally as opposed to listen to the wisdoms of our bodies and say, "What do you need right now? How would you like to give birth?" The body knows. We're designed to know how to be born, how to give birth, how to make love, and how to die. I also recently trained as a death doula.

Alison Stewart: Really? Oh, my friend is training that.

Chloé Zhao: That's a whole different conversation, but the body knows how to die. The first birth is very much she's trying to listen to her own body and not romanticizing it. It's also things happen, like it is in nature. When she goes to the place where her mother also gave birth, in the hollow of this tree, we're not saying, "Right there is the safest way to do it. Nothing will go wrong." Actually, that idea is why we start controlling it.

She's going surrendering herself to the rhythm of nature and to what her body wants to do in that moment. The second time, not so much. [chuckles] It's a little bit more difficult, but at the same time, there is a different kind of surrender to that, which is also beautiful, because this is the reality we live in now. There's this human being's community, and the way she connected with Mary in that birth scene.

Alison Stewart: It came up in the film that death is a part of life, and they have a discussion about children dying. I spoke to Maggie O'Farrell when the book came out in 2021, and she talked about the fact that childhood mortality rates were high back in that time.

Chloé Zhao: Very high.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to the clip we could talk about on the other side.

Chloé Zhao: Yes.

Maggie O'Farrell: I just refused to accept and have always refused to accept that anywhere in the world, at any time in history, that losing a child is anything less than catastrophic. I refuse to believe that people's hearts weren't broken over and over again. Shakespeare himself had three sisters who died, two of whom died as infants before he was born, and he had another sister who died aged seven. I don't believe that his parents didn't grieve for those daughters. [chuckles] Who would be callous enough to suggest such a thing?

Alison Stewart: Do you agree with her?

Chloé Zhao: I do. I think grief is something that something much bigger than us had designed us to have for a reason, because without grief, there's no empathy, and there's no love. We connect with each other through our grief more than our joy. I agree. At the same time, I think how we deal with that grief has been changing. The narratives we put on that gives a different weight now than before.

Alison Stewart: Hamnet is about motherhood, it's about a couple, it's about individuals, and it's about grief, and how two different people will handle grief so very differently. Do you relate to that as a creative person?

Chloé Zhao: I do, and I see these two trends, [chuckles] not the most graceful word, of how grief or doubt, and you kind of sign them sometimes to these two different energies we talked about earlier. What they love about each other at the beginning turned out to be a big obstacle, because they're so different, and then they are drawn to each other, but also because they're so different.

When something like this happens, it's almost impossible to see it from someone else's perspective. He can't express that grief. For him, if he starts crying, then he will be crying until the end of the day. He's held every tear in since he was a little boy, so he can't do it. He also needs to hold space for people in his lives. For her, her grief is so overwhelming, and I can relate to her in that sense. Without some kind of container, I'm just grabbed by the complexes. I can't get out of it, frozen.

In a beautiful way, the only way for him to survive is to find a way to express it, and that his safe place is his art, his fantasy, which I also can relate to. Because he did that, like many, many artists, that's how they deal with their grief, because they did that, she and that audience is able to have a container. That container is in the shape of a play, a film, the size of a theater room, or a circle of a globe. Within that container, the chaos of their grief gets to have meaning. In the end, they needed each other as much as they did at the beginning.

Alison Stewart: When you and the cast had a particularly tough day, you would dance at the end.

Chloé Zhao: [chuckles] Yes.

Alison Stewart: What did the dancing do for you? What did it do for your cast members? What did it do for the DP, and the grip, and everybody else on set?

Chloé Zhao: Well, part that I learned in my tantric training is emotions is energy in motion. Not only the emotion you feel in the moment, but the things that trigger from your trauma and maybe not just yours, but things you held in yourself for generations. Sometimes, all it really needs is to shake it off, to move it out of you. That's scary because when you do that, more will come. You really feel like you have to let go of that control of that emotion, and which we've been told to control it, but when you start dancing, you go into your body, and then the body's going to do what it needs to do, and you have to let go of the control. When you start blasting Rihanna and when you're told it's part of the scene, because it's not just turn on the music, by the way. We choreograph it.

Alison Stewart: Oh.

Chloé Zhao: We start the scene as how the scene is, like Hamnet's dead, and then he comes back to life when Staying Alive playing. In the middle of the scene, music will come, and they have to dance themselves out of the scene, and then the crew would join. It feels very purposeful, but also when you see others do it, it gives you the permission. It's not mandatory, but everyone ends up joining, even if just waving their arms.

Alison Stewart: What do you hope people will talk about after viewing the movie? After people [chuckles] stop crying, first of all, and then they go out, they have coffee, what do you hope they talk about?

Chloé Zhao: I feel that if they could share a little bit about themselves with the person they're with, or just with themselves, that maybe they haven't felt safe, or comfortable sharing, and just say to each other, and to themselves, "I see you, and all your emotions or feelings are welcome. It's okay."

Alison Stewart: That was my interview with Chloé Zhao, co-writer and director of Hamnet. The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Best Adapted Screenplay, and she is nominated for Best Director. We'll have more conversations with Academy Award nominees throughout the week, ahead of Sunday's ceremony. On our Instagram stories, we'll have our big picture conversations for those whose work is behind the camera. Our Instagram is @allofitnyc.