Ms. Buckley, your filmography suggests a love of playing complex and contradictory women. What attracts you to these roles?
I mean, isn’t being human quite complex? Being alive is quite a complex journey, whether you’re a man or a woman. And I need the complexities, I need the shadows, because it helps me to become more human and more connected to the world and to myself. I have an allergic reaction to disembodiment; I’ve tried it in many forms in my life, and I’m simply allergic to it. It does something to me…
How have you worked to fight against that disconnection?
Well, as I’ve grown up, I’ve become more curious. I’m very grateful for the women that I’ve played who have allowed me to integrate that complexity within me, to integrate the shadows within me, so that I can be in a deeper, more total contact with the world around me and with the relationships around me. It’s been the greatest education of my life. Last year, there were two characters I played one after the other: one was the bride of Frankenstein, this bride who has never had a voice in any iteration of Frankenstein before. And then Hamnet was about giving voice to a woman who lived beside somebody who’s been so instrumental to what language has become, who has been so instrumental to what love stories have become. I really love giving voice to women who haven’t got voices, bringing that to the surface.
“I found it a very powerful place to create from. It was a soft experience. It didn’t feel bound by metal and pressure.”
Was that what initially drew you to the role of Agnes in Hamnet?
I think that playing Agnes was something that I didn’t know I needed. Or maybe I did unconsciously know I needed, but I hadn’t met her yet. She’s so connected to her body, to her mind, to something bigger than her. She’s fiercely strong, but also deeply tender. I remember I read the book that the film is based on throughout one night because I couldn’t go to sleep until I finished it. Reading the birth scene… That hit me, because I was so curious about motherhood.
The birth scene in the forest is one of the most incredible scenes in the film, not just emotionally, but also visually and even physically, it’s so powerful.
That’s the scene that stayed with me the most. I mean, I’d never read anything like that, even the idea of this embodiment of her own nature. You’re right that the nature was so wild, and the act of creating life in that space was such an elemental force that…
Was it a difficult scene to act?
I always find it strange when people ask me, how hard was it? How difficult was it? It’s an absolute privilege. I love my job! I always have a bit of fear because I don’t know where I’m going to go and I’m hoping something real will happen. And when you get to work with Chloé, often that does happen, you are really touching truth and presence, absolute presence. But you never know what’s going on! You never know! So I was excited, I hadn’t given birth at that point, and every woman gives birth completely differently. So this was about being in a conversation with nature as almost the doula. And in my imagination, the whole forest, the trees were like monks that were willing me to create this life, to bring this life into the world. That was a pleasure.
It sounds like an almost spiritual experience.
I found it a very powerful place to create from. It was a soft experience. It didn’t feel bound by metal and pressure, like, “You must perform! You’ve got a hundred million pounds riding on your back,” and everybody’s coming into a state of like fear. That creates a different expression. But this was actually so fluid… It allowed so much to come through, and we could have the absolute intention of what we were looking to experience, an openness to discover it, and also the lightness of touch to let it go, so that something else could come back in the next day.
“I take it all. There’s nothing I let go of! I think the thing that Agnes revealed and brought into myself was tenderness.”
Apparently the cast and crew even did dancing and meditation rituals together, is that true?
(Laughs) I think it might sound kind of sexy, like we were all kind of sitting in an ashram, rubbing each other’s bellies or something. It wasn’t like that! It was just about respect, about quietening your mind and getting into your body. It was part of that letting go that I mentioned: letting go so that you could be awake for something the next day. It was a really important part of the process.
Do you also have your own rituals around preparing for a role or a project?
For Hamnet, Chloé and I would have a dialogue the night before and then I did this thing called fever writing, so I would almost treat this scene as if it was a dream and I would write from the place of that dream, which was kind of abstract. Then I would send it to Chloé as an essence of something that I was feeling within the scene… Sometimes that was a piece of music that I thought was a vibration of the scene. It helped me to have that kind of conversation with Chloé without an idea suffocating it, because that stifles me. Then when I got there in the morning, Chloé could already feel where I was heading, and she would distill me down to a deeper place. We’d already begun the conversation before I even arrived.
Does going that deeply into a character make it hard to leave the role behind at the end of a project?
Well, I take it all. There’s nothing I let go of! I think the thing that Agnes revealed and brought into myself was tenderness. I think often as a strong woman, you’re maybe projected with the idea of strength and you metabolize that, and it becomes a defense system around you… But I have needs. I’m deeply in need. I want love. I want life. I want to be as full of myself within that need, which is a very scary place to live. And Agnes, I think, allowed me to be absolutely embodied. I think she’s facilitated some tenderness to come out.