Maggie O'Farrell didn't want to write 'Hamnet's' script. How Chlo Zhao changed her mind

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When I first heard that Chloé Zhao was interested in making a film of my novel, “Hamnet,” I was instantly intrigued.Having seen all her films, I knew she wasn’t going to be the kind of director who would render from “Hamnet” a pristine, conventional costume drama.

You know the ones: There’s always a high count of mobcaps, and the landscapes appear pastoral and idealized, like a shampoo advertisement, and actors look anachronistically clean and go about saying things like, “Pass me my reticule, good sir.” I also knew that she was not a bardolater; she wouldn’t, as I had feared when a screen adaptation was first mooted, put William Shakespeare front and center, obscuring the story of his children and wife.I had been told that she wanted to co-write the script with me.I went into our first-ever Zoom call with the full and firm intention that I would politely decline: I was working on other things, I was planning to say, and while I wished her well with the script I didn’t want to be involved.

The working life of a novelist is, by nature, a very solitary one; I had never collaborated on a writing project and I didn’t think I wanted to start.Forty minutes later, I shut my laptop, wondering what on earth had just happened.I had agreed to write the script with her, and I had just heard myself say that, sure, I would write the first pass and deliver it in a couple of months.What can I say about this complete volte-face? Chloé is a very persuasive and surprising person.

I can’t remember what I expected to glimpse on a Zoom call with an Oscar-winning film director — gold door handles, perhaps, a butler at the very least? It certainly wasn’t what appeared to be a small caravan with multiple dogs wandering about in the background, and an impassioned person in a hoodie with ocean-wet hair, fiercely brandishing a copy of my book at me, saying, “I want to make ...