Modern Love · The New York Times

Jessie Buckley Became a Mother for ‘Hamnet.’ Then She Became One for Real.

December 10, 2025·36 min·2 clips

Buckley's unscripted primal scream in Hamnet was 'a scream for a hundred mothers who've lost their children.'

Anna Martin begins by saying she recently saw Hamnet, the new film starring Paul Mescal and Jesse Buckley. The movie imagines William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes grieving the loss of their only son. Martin calls it devastating and brilliant. She says Buckley is masterful and that she stole the show, which is why she wanted to speak with her. The conversation starts with Buckley’s experience of playing a mother on screen. It then turns to her experience of becoming a mother in real life. Martin also presses on how motherhood can feel transforming both in the movie and outside it. Buckley answers with a dry little joke that it is no joke being born. She then turns that joke into something serious. She describes birth as beautiful, vulnerable, and capable of bringing unexpected strength. Before the essay reading, Martin asks whether Buckley wants to tee up the story. Buckley keeps the setup plain and direct. She says it is a big thing, this business of being born. The episode then turns to Victoria Daherty’s essay, "The Wrong Kind of Inheritance." The narrator says she always knew something might happen to one of her children. She admits she never said it out loud and tried not to dwell on it. That fear is tied to superstition and to a family history of loss. The essay draws on a Slavic heritage and the painful memory of mothers and grandmothers who lost children. It also includes the ordinary, anxious habit of checking whether children are still breathing. By the end, the episode has become a conversation about performance, motherhood, and the fragile strength people find in caring for children.

As heard by us

Jessie Buckley links Hamnet, new motherhood, and inherited maternal fear in a quiet, grief-shaped Modern Love episode.

Modern Love brings Jessie Buckley to Hamnet through the hinge between acting and lived experience. Anna Martin frames the conversation around Buckley's role as Agnes, a mother grieving her son, then turns gently toward Buckley's own new motherhood.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want a slow, intimate conversation about Hamnet, grief, and the strange strength of new motherhood.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Modern Love