MOVIE NEWS – The lead actors of Hamnet also underwent unusual training ahead of the shoot.

Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal play a deeply loving married couple in the film: William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes. To make sure the chemistry truly worked between them, the director – two-time Oscar winner Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) – sent them to a tantric workshop. In a workshop rooted in an Indian philosophy that is over 1,500 years old, they practiced exercises in which they had to embody the sexual organs – specifically the linga and the yoni. Zhao’s aim was for their shared performance to feel passionately instinctive, and for the awards buzz surrounding the film to fully validate that ambition. So far, Hamnet has won 50 awards and received 202 nominations, including five Golden Globes, and forecasts suggest Oscar nominations could follow in the major categories (best lead and supporting acting, best film, best director, best screenplay, best original score).

Buckley told British Vogue that the tantric workshop was no small ordeal for them – at least at first: “The first three minutes were horribly awkward, because Paul and I had to embody the penis and the vagina in front of each other, but then we got into it pretty quickly.”

Jessie Buckley recently collected another award thanks to her performance in Hamnet. The Critics Choice Association honored her with its prize for best actress.

Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Hamnet depicts a period in the Shakespeare couple’s life when they must face an enormous tragedy. Their young son, Hamnet, dies – pushing the father toward writing his masterpiece, Hamlet – while Agnes searches for spiritual anchors to process her grief.

(Hamnet – Release: January 22, 2026.)

Source: UIP Dunafilm