Interview Quotes

Exploring Grief and Performance

"On Hamnet, the New York Times says, Buckley's performance of loss seems to draw from some dark place where every parent's worst nightmare has pooled. Her scream is both unfathomable and instantly recognisable."

— SPEAKER_01 • 00:00:00

"I think the idea of losing a child is unfathomable. I hope I, like, touched the edges of what that truth might be. But, you know, I don't have any idea where grief begins and where it stops. And I guess when I get an opportunity to imagine and experience what it might be, I just always want to, with absolute respect, go wherever my heart is. And my body and my imagination is brave enough to go."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:00:50

"I think the more I do this job, the more I realise that I have to get more human in every aspect, not just in work, in myself. Get more curious. Making Hamnet and working with Chloe and with Paul was so, like, porous in a way and allowed me to go to a place and a deeper place than I probably have gone before, which I can't articulate why or how or what that is, like, in a tangible way."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:01:22

"But what helped facilitate doing that was Chloe's only really interested in absolute presence and humanity. When filming's, like, when it's hard work is when you're on your own in a trailer with your own head and you just are, like, have to all of a sudden leap to being, like, titanically emotional out of nowhere, that's really hard. But when you have a leader and colleagues and collaborators and somebody who's actually creating a world and asking you as an artist to keep filling the tank to be creating within that world, it's so much easier to go somewhere."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:01:45

Chemistry and Collaboration

"We knew each other a little bit before, just from being Irish, but we didn't, like, know each other like we do now. And I absolutely adore that man. I think he is a gigantic human."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:02:16

"I really respected his work. I think, and I see this in him now, I think he is genuinely somebody who can hold what it is to be a movie star. Not many people can. And it's because he has this giant capacity and it's also it's not just being a movie star because beside this giant, he's also incredibly human, like has been one of the most significant, important, like collaborators and male leads I've worked with."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:03:07

"Chemistry is a different thing. It's kinetic. It's like, it is energy, you know, it's vibrations. And we knew each other. But what happened in this read was something that I felt so, there was something unknowable about him. There was something unknowable about us. There was, like, this crackle of potential, which felt like, you know, that's always the most exciting place to meet somebody."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:04:17

The Process of Acting

"You know, sometimes, sometimes you arrive and you can just feel this is cooked. And you're trying to, like, kind of hold that space until they say action and then let the greyhounds run."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:05:18

"And I also trust the director as well. Like, sometimes, like, with Chloe on this, sometimes she would do one take, one set up, one shot. And that can be a little bit unnerving. Sometimes you're like, you sure? But her instincts are so connected and grounded and I trust her, like, implicitly."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:05:33

"And actually being lost as an actor was exactly what I needed to be as a character. And sometimes that feeling is so uncomfortable, you almost get scared of it and you want to hide it. And then I realised this is exactly what I need to let be seen. And I just have to be lost."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:06:53

"It's like somebody has reached into your heart and woken up a bit of you that you didn't know you were coming here to feel that day."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:08:18

The Enduring Impact of Roles

"Oh, everything stays with me. I think all the parts stay with me. There's no way of dislodging myself from what I've come to understand by living within these women. They've become my lighthouse. They've become my education. The bits of them all have created who I am. And I don't ever let them go."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:08:35

"They're all women who want, they want to live something more than maybe they're allowed. Or every time I get an opportunity to live through one of these women, I feel like I grow within my space as a woman because of what I've understood from them and what I've been able to incubate through them."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:09:14

"And the shadows of what they are has, I don't know, it's helped me let go of the things that don't serve me as a woman. Because I've come to understand it through them because I've come to understand it through them in a way."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:09:32

"We all have rage. There's a hunger, a desire, a mind, a body, hope, an education, like the brilliance of what women can be if they're given a space to live fully within it."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:10:13

"I think that's what these women have allowed me to be, is to allow what is deemed too much be full and alive."

— SPEAKER_00 • 00:10:36

"There is too much. It's about being alive. And there's a lot of life within women and that I, and of women that I know in my life and of these characters that doesn't get to fully be recognised or be given the truth that it deserves."

— SPEAKER_00 • 10:54

"I like playing the honest woman, like the complexity of what it is to be a woman. And to be a human, I wouldn't know what to do with the idea of what is appealing."

— SPEAKER_00 • 11:29

"No, not at all. It's like completely invigorating. It's like kind of massaging out the knots, you know? And when you come to understand the knots, they give you catharsis. You get relief. You get bigger connections, you know?"

— SPEAKER_00 • 12:04

"The curse for me is the projected idea of what it is to be a woman, what it is to be a human in the world. It has never been my experience from being alive. It's way more messier than that. It's way more complex than that. And I think when you get down into the messy truth of what it is to be a human being, that's when there's life."

— SPEAKER_00 • 12:45

The Art of Transformation: "The Bride"

"I remember when I read it first, it was like being plugged into an electrical socket. It was like reading like Sanskrit or something, you know. It was a whole new language. But the feeling I got in my body was like, I just felt pulsating, like prilled, terrified. Had no idea how to go about even starting this."

— SPEAKER_00 • 13:18

"I want to live in an unconscious place when I work. So over the months that I prep on anything, I'm taking everything as ingredients, as food. I'm taking my dreams. I'm taking things that I see on the street."

— SPEAKER_00 • 14:33

"Not always. Like, well, like with Fargo, I remember when I was playing Orietta Mayflower, there was something instinctively to me very birdy about her."

— SPEAKER_00 • 15:02

"There's always a process. You know, you start and you really hate yourself because you sound nothing like the thing you want to. But it's, you've got, it's like a muscle. It's like, for me, it's like music."

— SPEAKER_00 • 15:37

"I'm happy to be called a wild animal. She wants me to be."

— SPEAKER_00 • 16:10

"Yeah, I have a lot of life in me. Maybe I am now, maybe more so now, yeah."

— SPEAKER_00 • 16:17

"I think I'm becoming more like myself."

— SPEAKER_00 • 16:34

"We all know that from seeing his work. He's going to go wherever that asks him to go. And it was thrilling. It was, you know, when you get to work with somebody who's equally as muscular and provocative and intense as I am, you're like, okay, it's fun to go to work."

— SPEAKER_00 • 17:04

"No, it's, it's punk. It's proper punk. It's, I am, I feel very proud of it. I feel it's so rare nowadays that you get a script, a set, an actor, a language, a character that is as bold."

— SPEAKER_00 • 17:35

"And as, I really think Maggie has a language that is very new. You know, she's, she's messing with form. She's messing with what's possible, especially for women."

— SPEAKER_00 • 17:51

"Because it feels alive, you know, you cut the bullshit. You like become more honest and you become more focused about what's important."

— SPEAKER_00 • 18:56

"I mean, my heart is like cracked open in a way that I, you can't even really know until you've experienced what that is. I think before I would have probably been scared of how vulnerable that is. And now I want that humanity and the strength and vulnerability of being a mother and, uh, and loving like that and the human and how human that is."

— SPEAKER_00 • 19:16

"I, I, I just want it to be seen. I don't want to wear any mask ever. I want, I want more life."

— SPEAKER_00 • 19:34

"You know, it's just very exciting. It's thrilling. It's like, whoa, there's like a whole other, whole other world now. Becoming a mother wakes you up to awe again. It wakes you up to life."

— SPEAKER_00 • 20:10

Artistic Upbringing and Creative Passions

"Yeah, we had a, there was a lot of value put on expression and experience."

— SPEAKER_00 • 20:36

"I love, I love creating things. I love, I love being an artist. I love being part of a community of artists. Being part of this community has like gone beyond my wildest expectations and imagination of what is possible."

— SPEAKER_00 • 21:17

"I saw magic. I saw the magic of like storytelling and how, how real it can make you feel. How like it can send you somewhere else, but it can feel like so total, even though it's, you know, magic."

— SPEAKER_00 • 21:48

"Oh, I mean, I never in a, on a million years thought I'd make a film. Because I didn't have a TV till I was 15."

— SPEAKER_00 • 22:04

A Journey Through Depression and Self-Discovery

"I was not, I had depression and I wasn't very well. And so I wasn't ready to go to university. And I didn't, I was a bit lost. I didn't know."

— SPEAKER_00 • 23:06

"Well, I wanted to go and study musical theatre. And I came over to London in that year off to audition and try and get into one of these theatre schools. And I didn't get in."

— SPEAKER_00 • 23:41

"I knew I was doing that, but like, I, I just thought I'd go and practice. I didn't think it would go anywhere."

— SPEAKER_00 • 24:14

"You know, I had just raw passion. I couldn't believe my luck. I mean, you know, this was something that I had dreamt about and I was getting an opportunity to do it and like be a professional, you know, potentially get a role in the West End, be part of this community."

— SPEAKER_00 • 24:48

"I look at that and there, I think you are a brave girl. There's no way I would do that now. There's no hope in hell I would do that now. But I think the kind of raw passion and ignorance to just want to be part of this world was, what kind of burnt through me at that moment."

— SPEAKER_00 • 25:14

"No. Have you gone back to see them since? No, that's okay. I probably wasn't ready. I, I wasn't meant to do musical theater. There are wise. I just wasn't ready. I needed to get to know myself and I didn't go back to study for another three years and I did lots of things in that time."

— SPEAKER_00 • 25:38

"You know, this journey of, of finding a way to incubate the shadows in the women that I play comes from a, from that moment in my life because there was so many of the feelings that I had and I had a lot of feeling and I had a lot of life and I wanted a lot from life and I was really hungry for it and I felt like there was no place for that when I was 15 and I think that's when it imploded in on me and when I got sick and, and lost myself, you know, felt like the weight, I couldn't, I couldn't crack the ceiling."

— SPEAKER_00 • 26:14

"I got help. I got therapy quite early on, um, singing. I mean, I, I honestly think it's kind of saved me. Expression has saved me."

— SPEAKER_00 • 26:52