Paul Mescal says Hamnet’s ending shows the impact of grief

Paul Mescal says Hamnet’s ending shows the impact of grief.

Mescal, 29, stars in Chloe Zhao's Hamnet – which tells the story of the playwright’s marriage to Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) and how the devastating loss of their son Hamnet inspired Hamlet – and Paul opened up about portraying Shakespeare’s sense of loss.

He told Variety: “I didn’t think about navigating it from, like, love to grief. I think I looked at it as analysing somebody’s life.

“I was excited by the fact that I would get to show a lot of colours in terms of that, and the more that we could really make an audience feel these two people were madly in love with each other, the more that we would feel the loss of their connection in the middle act and the final act a little bit.”

Paul previously said he knew that the acclaimed movie was special the first time he watched it.

Asked when he realised the flick's potential, he told Collider: "I think when I started rehearsing with Jessie, before we started shooting.

"I'd had read the script, so I was aware that the ceiling for what the film could be, to my mind, was pretty high."