[This story contains spoilers from Hamnet.]

In Hamnet, Jessie Buckley plays a real historical figure, Agnes or Anne Hathaway, known as the wife of William Shakespeare.

But rather than delving into the historical research, Buckley wanted to shape** **her portrayal of Agnes from the “inside out,” and play her based on her own instincts as well as in reaction to the costars around her.

“I always approach my characters like strangers that I pass on the street and there’s wild curiosity, and I can’t help but follow them,” Buckley said.

“I mean, yes, I bought a ‘How to Be a Tudor’ book, and I read about four pages of it, and I thought, ‘I can’t do this,’” she said, laughing. “I usually do those things out of fear, and then they kind of never see the light again.”

Buckley, an Oscar nominee for The Lost Daughter, received her first Golden Globe nomination Monday for her portrayal of Agnes, an earthy woman who falls in love with Shakespeare and then rages against and mourns the premature loss of her son, Hamnet.** **The Focus Features film, which is based on a novel, received six nods total including for her co-star Paul Mescal, who plays William Shakespeare, director Chloe Zhao and for best motion picture drama.

Buckley initially took on the role because of Zhao, who Buckley said she admires both as a filmmaker and because of “who she is and what she stands for, and seeing her in the industry and what she’s tried to explore in her stories.” But the part also came at a fortuitous time for Buckley, who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter Monday as she walked around Berlin with her baby.

“What it is to be a mother, to be a family, to love at all is so brave, because anytime you choose to love, you’re also choosing to lose. And I think the elemental nature of Agnes was something that I feel so lucky and grateful to have met at this moment in my life, because it just felt like a kind of collision. I don’t think I chose it. I think it kind of chose me in a way,” Buckley said.

She likened the filming experience to being on a “roller coaster,” in particular the final scene where Agnes is shown watching* Hamlet*, with the camera largely focused on her face, as she watches the play. The shooting process for this scene took eight days, which was also the last scene to be shot, and Buckley was surrounded by 300 extras at the Globe Theatre. Significantly, the key emotional moments, including the crowd all reaching out toward the dying Hamlet on stage along with Buckley and Hamnet making a reappearance in the scene, were not written in the script.

“There was no hands reaching out. There was no Hamnet. There was nothing. So it was all kind of being discovered in real time. I remember that moment when Jacobi [Hamnet] stepped out, on like day eight, having gone through this roller coaster. It was everything and broke my heart and gave it back to me in the same breath,” Buckley said.

“There was a moment on like, day five, where I’d come home after four days of kicking myself and going, “You’re useless,” Buckley continued. “I was driving home, and Max Richter’s ‘On the Nature of Daylight’ came on my podcast, and it just cracked something in me, and I sent it to Chloe, and the two of us met in the morning, and I said to her, “I just realized I am amongst 300 people who all have their own private grief or life.”

A woman then worked with the extras on set, meditated with them and “gave them permission to bring their grief” to the space, Buckley said, which led to them all reaching out with their hands.

Most theatergoers are also having a very emotional experience watching the film, which Buckley says is not something she anticipated going into the project, even as she acknowledges the enormity of grief the story carries.

“You always hope to affect and touch something in an audience. Your job is to help people feel the things that they maybe need to feel again or see again or recognize in the story that we tell,” she said. “You never know in what way or how much that’s going to do. When you’re making it, you’re just making it. But that’s been the biggest gift, and the biggest award of it all, is to have people be so moved and affected and find some catharsis. It’s not escapism. It’s something that can make you connect and feel again. I’m so proud of that.”