Modern Love · The New York Times

Jessie Buckley Became a Mother for 'Hamnet.' Then She Became a Real One. (Encore)

March 11, 2026·36 min·2 clips

Jessie Buckley describes her mother Marina singing in church and 'pulverizing the defense system' of old men who had tears streaming down their faces.

Anna Martin opens by framing Jessie Buckley’s awards-season moment and the attention around Hamnet. She then turns to the more private milestone underneath it all: Buckley recently had a baby daughter. Martin asks how everyone is doing, and Buckley answers with the calm surprise of someone still taking stock. The interview settles into the overlap between the film and real life. Buckley is playing Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, in a story about motherhood, and she is also becoming a mother herself. The conversation keeps coming back to that overlap. Martin asks plainly, and Buckley answers plainly, which keeps the exchange from feeling polished or distant. The mood is warm, but never glossy. Buckley sounds amused, tender, and a little stunned by how much has changed. The episode pays attention to the small, physical facts of new motherhood as much as the emotional ones. It stays with the way everything can feel different without needing to turn that into drama. There is room here for surprise, uncertainty, and the ordinary work of adjusting. The conversation also makes space for the emotional pressure that comes with a role like Agnes. Buckley does not separate the part from her own life in any neat way. Instead, the two keep echoing each other. That gives the episode its charge. It becomes less about a performance and more about how identity shifts when care becomes immediate and real. By the end, the talk feels like a thoughtful check-in that grows into something deeper. It is a clear look at how motherhood changes the scale of a life.

As heard by us

Jessie Buckley and Modern Love sit with motherhood, inherited fear, and the fragile fact of being born.

Jessie Buckley's appearance on Modern Love ties her role as Agnes in Hamnet to the more immediate shock of becoming a mother herself. Anna Martin keeps the conversation close to that threshold: pregnancy, birth, performance, and the strange new scale of feeling that arrives with…

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Why you'd press play

When you want motherhood, acting, and awards-season pressure in one honest conversation.

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