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  • Jon Stewart Calls FBI Director Kash Patel a ‘Make-a-Wish Man’ for Celebrating Gold Medal Win With USA Hockey Team

    Jon Stewart Calls FBI Director Kash Patel a ‘Make-a-Wish Man’ for Celebrating Gold Medal Win With USA Hockey Team

    On this week’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart covered the Right’s enthusiastic response to the United States’ hockey victory over Canada at the Olympics and poked fun at FBI Director Kash Patel for joining Team USA in the locker room for the celebration.

    At the top of Monday’s show, Stewart painted a dismal picture of what America was like before Team USA’s 2-1 gold medal win.

    “This country is in such emotional turmoil right now,” Stewart said. “A feeling that we are one nation divided, under siege. That perhaps we have crossed a Rubicon of this great American experiment, and that we, slowly and inexorably, are sliding into the abyss of fallen and broken democracies. But then!”

    The show then cut to a clip of Jack Hughes scoring the game-winning goal for Team USA.

    “We’re back, motherfucker!” Stewart exclaimed. “I know the powerful elites remain unaccountable, but he put the thing behind that other guy! This country was sinking into a cesspool we couldn’t recover from, but he put the vulcanized rubber disc behind the lord of the net! It was so unifying! There is nothing that can take away from the joyous moment as all Americans celebrate this incredible — wait, what the fuck?”

    The late-night host cut his celebration short upon seeing that Patel celebrated with Team USA in their locker room.

    “Is that FBI director Kash Patel?” Stewart added. “Are they putting a medal on FBI director Kash Patel? Is Kash Patel a Make-a-Wish man?”

    Stewart then turned his attention to the Right’s reaction to the win. The show cut to a clip of conservative commentator Benny Johnson saying that the triumph represented “masculinity and celebration,” two things that have been “completely and totally sanitized from our arch feminist culture, our estrogenetic culture.”

    “First of all, what a super weird year hockey is having. Like, in four months, to go from, ‘Nobody gives a shit about hockey,’ to, ‘Well, I like to watch them fuck,’ to, ‘Only hockey can save us from a dystopian, estrogenetic future.’” Stewart joked, referencing HBO’s hit queer hockey series “Heated Rivalry.” “Perhaps the strangest part is how this victory in a hockey match is being perceived on the right geopolitically.”

    Stewart then cut to clips from Fox News, in which contributors said that Canadians are “basically communists” and that “hockey is all that they had, and we took that away.”

    “What is with this sore winning?” Stewart joked. “And by the way, don’t we have enough real enemies? Now we got to pretend like Canada’s way of life is incongruous to the west? ‘Yeah! fuck those completely best neighbors our nation has ever had!’”

    Watch the entire monologue below.

  • U.S. Olympic Hockey Heroics Spurring Tickets Sales for NHL Games Online

    U.S. Olympic Hockey Heroics Spurring Tickets Sales for NHL Games Online

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    There was more than a gold medal on the line following Team USA’s overtime win over Canada in the 2026 Winter Olympics hockey final: new data shows the U.S.’ historic hockey victory also led to a spike in ticket sales for regular season hockey games online.

    Team USA defeated Canada by a score of 2-1 after New Jersey Devils forward Jack Hughes slotted the winning goal home just over 90 seconds into sudden-death overtime. The golden goal secured the U.S. men’s first Olympic gold medal since the famous “Miracle on Ice” win over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics.

    Now, stats from ticketing site Gametime show ticket purchases for New Jersey Devils NHL games spiked “dramatically” in the hours following the gold medal game.

    Gametime says transactions for National Hockey League tickets online were “more than 10x higher” than a typical day. The so-called “get-in price” for upcoming Devils’ games also “more than doubled,” per Gametime, with Wednesday’s game between New Jersey and the Buffalo Sabres showing a 127% price increase. “This kind of demand spike is typically reserved for playoff runs and championship celebrations,” notes Gametime on its blog.

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    The 2026 Olympics were officially a ratings bonanza, with NBCUniversal touting an average of more than 23 million viewers watching across NBC, Peacock, USA Network and CNBC during the two-week period. Hockey was among the biggest draws, with the U.S. women’s hockey team’s victory over Canada ranking as the most-watched women’s hockey game ever, attracing 5.3 million viewers across USA Network and Peacock. While ratings for the men’s gold medal match — which also saw the U.S. topple Canada — have yet to be released, it’s clear there’s a surge of new interest in the sport.

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    That’s not even taking into account the “Heated Rivalry” effect: ticketing site SeatGeek released data in January suggesting that the hit HBO Max show may have driven demand for hockey tickets, especially among new fans. According to SeatGeek, the average number of hockey tickets sold on its site increased by 24% during the week of “Heated Rivalry’s” buzzy season one finale in December.

    The site also cited a 13% year-over-year increase in the share of solo ticket buyers. As SeatGeek says, “This trend aligns with anecdotal evidence that ‘Heated Rivalry’ may be pulling in new or more casual fans—people curious enough to check out a game on their own.”

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    You can find NHL tickets online on Ticketmaster, which is the Official Ticket Marketplace of the NHL. Can’t find the seats you want or looking to score a deal online? You can also buy NHL tickets online through third-party sites like SeatGeek, Gametime, StubHub and Vivid Seats.

    The 2025-26 NHL season kicked off in October before the league took a mid-season break in February to allow players to complete in the Olympics. The league resumes play Feb. 25 as teams fight for a spot in the Stanley Cup playoffs in April. The Florida Panthers are the current Stanley Cup champions, having defeated the Edmonton Oilers last year.

    The Professional Women’s Hockey League or PWHL, meantime, resumes play after the Olympics on Feb. 26. The eight-team women’s league features Boston, Minnesota, Montréal, New York, Ottawa, Toronto, Seattle and Vancouver. The current champions are the Minnesota Frost.

  • For the Tourette Syndrome Community, the BAFTAs Brought on a Familiar Dread-Like Feeling

    For the Tourette Syndrome Community, the BAFTAs Brought on a Familiar Dread-Like Feeling

    When the advocate Jess Thom heard about a person with Tourette’s “ticcing” the BAFTAs, she had a familiar feeling: dread.

    Thom has Tourette Syndrome and when she got word of what happened with John Davidson, it brought to the surface many of the misunderstandings and confused reactions she has spent her life trying to fight.

    “There are a lot of myths and oversimplifications about Tourette Syndrome, and a global frenzy is not the best place to have a conversation about them,” the U.K.-based Thom, 45, said by Zoom from her home Monday evening as she reflected on the events. “And it’s all happening in a climate with increased hostility to disabled people, with threats to Medicaid and the ADA.”

    Davidson at the ceremony engaged in “ticcing,” the term for when people who have Tourette Syndrome, or TS, involuntarily say or do something that can have the effect of making others uncomfortable. In this case, the executive producer and inspiration for the Tourette’s-focused winner, I Swear, called out a series of curses and insults, as well as a racial slur when Black presenters Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were on stage. The moment blew up after the BBC kept it in the tape-delayed broadcast two hours later and even for a time on a streaming replay. (It has since been edited out of the latter; the BBC apologized for “strong and offensive language.”)

    Thom and others in the community say the award-show kerfuffle raises the lack of understanding they feel has beset the Tourette’s community for years. Among the biggest misconceptions is over “oppositional ticcing,” which essentially involves saying the worst possible thing one can say in the room (the involuntary urge to yell “bomb” in an airport, for instance).

    “People don’t understand that it’s contextual, and that part of the ticcing is saying that exact damaging thing,” Thom said. Instead, people assume it’s being said because someone “secretly” believes it or is mindfully trying to hurt somebody. Thom founded the advocacy group Tourettes Hero, which, among other things, seeks to help people understand the background and also fights for disability benefits on behalf of people with TS.

    The U.K. TS charity Tourette’s Action sought to clarify this with their own statement on Monday as they also expressed disappointment with how the story was playing out.

    “[I]t is vital that the public understands a fundamental truth about Tourette syndrome: tics are involuntary. They are not a reflection of a person’s beliefs, intentions, or character,” the organization said. People with Tourette’s can say words or phrases they do not mean, do not endorse and feel great distress about afterwards. These symptoms are neurological, not intentional, and they are something John, like many others with Tourette’s, lives with every single day.

    “The backlash from certain parts of the media has been extremely saddening, particularly given how hard John works to raise awareness and understanding,” the org continued. “What should have been a night of celebration for him became overwhelming, and he made the difficult decision to leave the ceremony halfway through. This moment reflects exactly what I Swear shows so openly: the isolation, misunderstanding and emotional weight that so often accompany this condition. People with Tourette’s manage their physical and social environments and symptoms on a constant basis. The price of being misunderstood is increased isolation, risk of anxiety and depression and death by suicide.”

    Another misconception is around what the medical community terms “coprolalia,”  which involves the use of obscenities or other inappropriate words and gestures, which Davidson also engaged in. Though there is a firm neurobiological basis, people can react to it, advocates say, in a way that does not fully take that into account and believe there is some intent to shock.

    The New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams posted on social media Monday that his own experience with TS made him want to correct misperceptions. “As the first known person to be elected with #Tourettes. As a person who has #coprolalia and also tics the “N-word.” As a Black man I have some lived views and thoughts to share tomorrow. #StayTuned #bafta  (Feel free to google coprolalia before then),” he wrote.

    TS is a condition that involves both motor and vocal tics. A very high number — composing about 1 percent — of all young people worldwide are believed to have it, with about 10-15 percent of those also having coprolalia. For many, the severity dramatically decreases as they reach adulthood, but the CDC still estimates that an estimated 1.4 million people, children and adults, have TS in the United States.

    The entertainment industry has sought to spotlight many forms of neurological conditions in the past decade, such as with the autism-centric film Wonder or the ABC series The Good Doctor. Historically, though, Tourette’s has often more been seen on-screen as a one-off novelty, as with a famous vintage L.A. Law episode.

    A breakthrough of sorts occurred in 2006 with a Big Brother U.K. contestant, Pete Bennett, who has TS and brought visibility to it. And pop-culturally, the syndrome has become especially better known in the last few years thanks to Baylen Dupree, a Gen Z woman with TS who gained a TikTok following and, last year, a TLC reality show about her experience as someone who has TS, along with Billie Eilish, who has said she has it too.

    A spokeswoman for Eilish said she was not available Monday to comment on the BAFTAs but pointed a reporter to previous videos, which included an interview with David Letterman on his Netflix show in 2022 in which she began ticcing and then told a sensitive Letterman that it was something whose response could get under her skin.

    “The most common way that people react [to a tic] is they laugh, because they think I’m trying to be funny,” she said. “And I’m always left incredibly offended by that.” She said she hoped talking more about it could lead to wider acceptance and a realization of how common it was. “So many people have it that you would never know,” she told Letterman.

    Part of the challenge with the condition is that the ticced words can do real harm even as the person causing the harm deeply wishes not to do so. In a culture simultaneously concerned with accountability on one hand and taking into account the marginal on the other, that can mean a difficult line to walk.

    On Monday, the BAFTAs attempted such a tiptoe. The organization released a statement that “one of our guests, John Davidson MBE, has Tourette syndrome and has devoted his life to educating and campaigning for better understanding of this condition. Tourette syndrome causes involuntary verbal tics, that the individual has no control over. Such tics are in no way a reflection of an individual’s beliefs and are not intentional.” 

    But it also said that “our guests heard very offensive language that carries incomparable trauma and pain for so many. We want to acknowledge the harm this has caused, address what happened and apologize to all,” adding that it was apologizing “unreservedly” for the “profoundly offensive term.”

    From the stage, the man who plays Davidson, Robert Aramayo, who won lead actor, tried to simply urge sympathy for the man who inspired his character. “John Davidson is the most remarkable man I’ve ever met. Tonight especially, I just want to say that the people living with Tourette syndrome,” he said upon receiving a different honor. “For people living with Tourette’s, it’s us around them who help them define what their experience is. So, to quote the film, they need support and understanding.”

    Davidson himself released a statement that said, “I am and always have been deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning,” adding that “I chose to leave the auditorium early into the ceremony as I was aware of the distress my tics were causing.”

    Thom said that the best way to handle a situation in which a person with Tourette’s will be present is for organizers to prepare everyone in the room so that there are as few shocks as possible. She attended the BAFTAs several years ago due to a pilot she had made about TS and felt organizers did a good job, ensuring a smooth night for all; she is less sure, she said, if all attendees and presenters were sufficiently prepared Sunday night, given the reaction. 

    She described the “emotional complexity of living with a body and a mind that behaves in ways that are shocking and unexpected and that does not reflect who you are.” 

    Thom hopes that, for all the ways the incident has been misunderstood, it ultimately helps people realize that those living with TS are not just experiencing an occasional incident but are in a state of ongoing challenge.

    “It can be sensational and surreal and strange,” to have Tourette Syndrome, she said. “But you have to realize that John would have been ticcing before the ceremony and ticcing at the ceremony and ticcing on the subway home. People with Tourette’s are constantly managing it.”

  • Contender power rankings, Cade’s MVP case, Celtics/Lakers lessons, Team USA & Boozer vs. Dybantsa with John Fanta

    On today’s Kevin O’Connor Show, KOC is joined by NBC broadcaster John Fanta to talk everything NBA. They start with Eastern Conference contender power rankings: who’s the number one team in the East? Could Cade Cunningham really be MVP?

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    Then, they turn to Team USA hockey’s gold-medal win against Canada before John tells the story of his call-up to the NBA on NBC by Mike Tirico.

    Plus, they discuss if Anthony Edwards is the face of the league, address the troubles in Phoenix & Houston, and take a look at the top prospects in this year’s fiery draft class.

    That and more, today!

    Eastern Conference Contenders (1:39)
    USA Hockey and John’s NBC Career (43:16)
    Draft Class (1:10:20)

    LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 22: Payton Pritchard #11 of the Boston Celtics talks to head coach Joe Mazulla during the second half of their game against the Los Angeles Lakers at Crypto.com Arena on February 22, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Luiza Moraes/Getty Images)

    LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 22: Payton Pritchard #11 of the Boston Celtics talks to head coach Joe Mazulla during the second half of their game against the Los Angeles Lakers at Crypto.com Arena on February 22, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Luiza Moraes/Getty Images)

    (Luiza Moraes)

    🖥️ Watch this full episode on the Yahoo Sports NBA YouTube channel

    Check out all episodes of The Kevin O’Connor Show and the rest of the Yahoo Sports podcast family at https://apple.co/3zEuTQj or at yahoosports.tv

  • Messi Meltdown in LA, EPL Title Race Drama & Is the 2026 World Cup Already Cracking?

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    LAFC sent a loud message in their 3-0 dismantling of Inter Miami, and it wasn’t just about the scoreline. Los Angeles FC looked sharp, organized, and ruthless, while Inter Miami CF looked frustrated and overwhelmed. We break down what went wrong for Miami, what this result means long-term, and whether Lionel Messi’s heated postgame interaction with referees is a sign of deeper cracks. Plus, we recap the rest of MLS opening weekend and highlight the teams that set the tone early.

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    Across the pond, the Premier League title race is heating up once again. Manchester City and Arsenal continue to push each other to the limit at the top of the table. Can City pull off another late surge, or is this finally Arsenal’s year? We examine the remaining fixtures, squad depth, and pressure points that could decide the title.

    Off the pitch, concerns are growing around the 2026 tournament. With New Jersey canceling its World Cup fan zone and Gillette Stadium reportedly resisting FIFA licensing without additional funding, we ask whether the 2026 World Cup is starting to show serious organizational strain. Is this just early logistical turbulence—or a warning sign for what’s ahead?

    Timestamps:

    (7:00) – LAFC thrash Messi and Inter Miami

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    (23:00) – MLS opening weekend recap

    (32:00) – Arsenal and Man City continue to battle in PL title race

    (47:45) – World Cup in danger of falling apart already?

    MESSI-INTER MIAMI

    MESSI-INTER MIAMI

    🖥️ Watch this full episode on YouTube

    Check out the rest of the Yahoo Sports podcast family at https://apple.co/3zEuTQj or at yahoosports.tv

  • Warner Bros. Discovery Likely to Take New Paramount Skydance Offer Under Review While Still Recommending Netflix Pact to Shareholders

    Warner Bros. Discovery Likely to Take New Paramount Skydance Offer Under Review While Still Recommending Netflix Pact to Shareholders

    Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance leaders spent a busy week in negotiations, and now the WBD board is likely to tell shareholders before the market opens on Tuesday that it is taking the bid under review while still recommending the Netflix transaction that is up for a vote on March 20.

    Representatives for WBD and Paramount Skydance declined to comment late Monday. The financial terms of the new offer were not immediately clear.

    Monday wrapped a busy seven-day period in which the WBD board sought Netflix’s blessing to engage in discussions with Paramount to “seek clarity” on its “best and final offer.” WBD asked Paramount Skydance “to clarify your proposal, which we understand will include a WBD per share price higher than $31” in a letter from Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and board chairman Samuel Di Piazza Jr. to Paramount’s board.

    If WBD is formally considering the Paramount Skydance offer, the next move in this chess game will come from Netflix: The streamer has four days to match Paramount’s new offer, or it could bail out of the bidding process. A source close to the situation noted that WBD is legally bound to recommend its signed agreement with Netflix, valued at nearly $83 billion. Paramount has fielded a $108 billion offer for the entirety of WBD, including its cable channels. Netflix is buying Warner Bros. and HBO Max.

    Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, in a Feb. 20 interview with Variety, declined to say how the streamer would respond to a higher offer from Paramount. But he did say that Netflix has a “rich history” of being “willing to walk away and let someone else overpay for things.”

    Under Netflix’s agreement with WBD, the streamer would buy Warner Bros.’s studios and streaming businesses for $27.75 per share (in all cash, a change Netflix made last month from its previous cash-and-stock offer). WBD shareholders would retain equity in Discovery Global, the company’s proposed spin-off entity housing CNN, TBS and other linear networks as well as Discovery+.

    Ellison first approached WBD CEO Zaslav in September 2025, initially offering $19/share for Warner Bros. Discovery. That came just weeks after Ellison’s Skydance Media closed its acquisition of Paramount Global. Paramount’s interest in WBD prompted the board to initiate a formal M&A review process — and the board picked Netflix as the winning bidder. WBD’s board has previously rejected Paramount’s takeover offers nine times.

    Paramount’s takeover offer is backed by Larry Ellison (David’s tech-billionaire father) and RedBird Capital Partners. The company has secured debt financing from Bank of America, Citigroup and Apollo Global Management. Paramount’s bid also includes capital from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

  • Philip Rivers’ son, Gunner Rivers, commits to play QB for NC State

    Like father, like son.

    Gunner Rivers, the son of eight-time Pro Bowl quarterback Philip Rivers, has committed to play for NC State. Rivers is a junior at Fairhope’s St. Michael Catholic High School in Alabama, where his father is head coach. Gunner announced his decision Monday on Instagram.

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    A 6-foot-3, 200-pound quarterback, Rivers is a four-star prospect and represents one of NC State’s biggest recruiting wins in years. Per Rivals, he’s the No. 12 quarterback in his class. He’ll play for the same program with which his father made his name.

    Philip Rivers' son has committed to play at his alma mater.

    Philip Rivers’ son has committed to play at his alma mater.

    (Lance King via Getty Images)

    Philip Rivers played at NC State from 2000-03. He was named ACC Player of the Year as a senior, and his 13,484 passing yards are the most in conference history. He went on to play 17 NFL seasons, most of them with the Chargers. He then returned to the NFL in December for a three-game stint with the Indianapolis Colts at 44 years old, four years removed from his initial retirement from football.

    Now his son will carry on his legacy in Raleigh. Gunner Rivers has one season remaining in high school and is scheduled to join the Wolfpack in 2027.

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    So far, Rivers is the highest-rated member and the only four-star commitment in a four-man NC State Class of 2027. NC State secured one four-star commitment in its 46th-ranked Class of 2026 from wide receiver Amiri Acker.

    Per Rivals, Rivers turned down offers from Auburn, Georgia, Miami, South Carolina, Missouri and Boston College to join NC State.

  • Cubs star Pete Crow-Armstrong takes random shot at his hometown Dodgers fans: Cubs ‘fans give a s***’

    Pete Crow-Armstrong grew up the son of a Chicago Cubs fan in Los Angeles.

    He went to Dodgers games as a kid, but claims he was never a fan, under strict orders from his father. Here’s Crow-Armstrong from a September article he wrote for The Players’ Tribune:

    Growing up in L.A., my dad gave me a couple of rules.

    1) I couldn’t root for the Dodgers.

    2) I couldn’t root for the Cardinals.

    Now a 23-year-old star outfielder for the Cubs, Crow-Armstong is outwardly expressing disdain — not for the Dodgers, but for their fans. Here’s Crow-Armstrong from a feature on him published by Chicago Magazine on Monday:

    “I love Chicago more and more,” Crow-Armstrong said. “It’s just an incredible city. The people are great. They give a s***.

    “They aren’t just baseball fans who go to the game like Dodgers fans to take pictures and whatever. They are paying attention. They care.”

    Pete Crow-Armstrong, seen here braving the frigid conditions of a January Bears game like a real fan.

    Pete Crow-Armstrong, seen here braving the frigid conditions of a January Bears game like a real fan.

    (Kara Durrette via Getty Images)

    That shot at Dodgers fans appears to have come out of left field. There’s no context for it in the story, at least. Crow-Armstrong was addressing his acclimation to Chicago and growing love for the city and apparently decided to throw in a swipe at sports fans from his home town.

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    He’s not the first. Taking shots at Southern California sports fans is a time-honored tradition in cities that take pride in their working class roots — especially those in cold-weather locales.

    Look at those soft sports fans with their nice weather and other things to do than watch a game. So the trope goes.

    Bottom line: This should play well in Chicago. And a young player who already won the North Side’s collective heart in his breakout 2025 campaign has certainly endeared himself further with Cubs fans.

  • No. 14 Kansas flies past No. 5 Houston to hand Cougars third straight loss and likely eliminate hopes for No. 1 seed

    No. 5 Houston’s hopes for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, or even a favorable spot in the Big 12 tournament, are over.

    The Cougars blew an early lead on Monday night and simply couldn’t keep up with No. 14 Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse. The Jayhawks rolled to a dominant 69-56 win, marking the program’s 41st straight home win on ESPN’s “Big Monday” under coach Bill Self. It also came the heels of what was a bad double-digit loss to Cincinnati last week, and gave them their third win over a top-five opponent.

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    Houston has now lost three straight games, all to the top tier of the Big 12. The fell at Iowa State by three points early last week, and then couldn’t keep up with Arizona on Saturday. This is the program’s first three-game losing skid since January 2017.

    Houston took off from the jump. The Cougars opened the game on an 11-3 run, and shut Kansas down almost completely defensively. The Jayhawks went just 2-13 from the field over the first 10 minutes of the game, and only stayed in it with seven quick free throws.

    Finally, it was Tre White who got the Jayhawks back to even with about 90 seconds left in the game. He drilled a 3-pointer from the wing, just the third made bucket from behind the arc all night, to cap what was a 7-0 run from the Jayhawks. Kansas ended up closing the half on an 11-0 run to take a four-point lead at the break. Peterson hit a floater right at the buzzer, giving him eight points in the first half.

    That continued well into the second period, too. Kansas took off, and used a long 13-0 run over a nearly 6 minute span to break the game wide open. That gave Kansas a 14-point lead, which was the Cougars’ largest deficit of the season.

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    Pretty quickly, the lead hit 18 after White drilled a wide-open 3-pointer in the corner. That sent Allen Fieldhouse into a frenzy, and was more than enough to lift the Jayhawks to the win.

    White led the way with 23 points and five rebounds in the win for Kansas on his three 3-pointers. Darryn Peterson added 14 points, and Bryson Tiller finished with 11 points and 10 rebounds. Peterson appeared to play normally throughout the contest, too, and played 30 minutes. The projected lottery pick has drawn significant criticism after being repeatedly unavailable due to various injuries, and he asked to come out early in a win over Oklahoma State due to cramping.

    But those issues with their star player and having to play without him for 11 full games, Self said, may have been a good thing.

    “I think our guys have gotten so much better since the start,” he said on ESPN. “And even playing without DP so much, I think in many ways it’s forced our other guys to grow up. So our ceiling is still well in front of us.”

    Kansas now sits at 21-7 on the season. The Jayhawks have won just two of their last four, after a 16-point home loss to Cincinnati on Saturday and a near-20-point blowout at Iowa State. But Monday’s win, especially with Peterson seemingly back to normal, set them up for what will be a statement opportunity at Arizona on Saturday that can shake up the Big 12 race completely.

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    Kingston Flemings led Houston with 16 points, though he went just 6-of-18 from the field and was the only Cougars player to hit double figures. The Cougars went 5-of-24 from the 3-point line as a team, and reached the free throw line only nine times compared to the 20 that Kansas did.

    Thankfully for Houston, the tough part of its schedule is over. The Cougars will take on Colorado, Baylor and Oklahoma State to end the regular season, all of which they should be able to handle and use to bounce back to form before the conference tournament in Kansas City.

    Though this losing skid is bad, Houston is still undoubtedly a legitimate team capable of making a run in the NCAA tournament. It’ll just have to figure this out, and fast. And, a top seed in the tournament is almost certainly no longer in the cards.

  • ‘Awards Chatter’ Pod: Jessie Buckley on Her Presumptive Oscar Turn in ‘Hamnet’ and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Upcoming ‘The Bride!’

    ‘Awards Chatter’ Pod: Jessie Buckley on Her Presumptive Oscar Turn in ‘Hamnet’ and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Upcoming ‘The Bride!’

    Jessie Buckley, this year’s best actress Oscar frontrunner for her portrayal of Agnes Shakespeare in Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet and the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is an Irish stage and screen actress who has been described by The Observer as “one of the most exciting actors of her generation,” by Vanity Fair as possessing “both dazzling charisma and a remarkable authenticity” and by The New York Times as having “a reputation for playing complicated roles with devastating power,” adding, “Few other actresses of her generation can gain access to such a wide spectrum of emotions, or seem as willing to risk being disliked for exploring the tougher ones.”

    Over just a decade on the big screen, Buckley, 36, has already given a host of memorable performances. She earned particular acclaim for her work in 2018’s Wild Rose, in which she played a Scottish ex-con who dreams of being a country music star, and for which she received a best actress BAFTA Award nomination; 2021’s The Lost Daughter, in which she played a young academic feeling conflicted about motherhood, and for which she received best supporting actress BAFTA, Spirit and Oscar noms; and 2022’s Women Talking, in which she played one of the women in a Mennonite community who debate what to do after discovering that the community’s men had been drugging and raping them, and for which she received a best supporting actress Critics Choice Award nom and she and her castmates received a best ensemble Actor Award nom.

    But it is her turn in Hamnet, as the earthy wife of playwright William Shakespeare and the mother of their three children, that has catapulted her career to another level — Rolling Stone, in its review of the film, wrote, “They will be talking about Jessie Buckley’s performance for years” — and her to the center of the awards conversation. Indeed, she has already won best actress Golden Globe, Critics Choice and BAFTA awards, and is nominated for best ensemble and best actress Actor awards, to say nothing of the best actress Oscar, which she is widely expected to win.

    Over the course of a conversation earlier this month in Santa Barbara, where Buckley was being honored with a career retrospective at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, she reflected on how she wound up, at just 17, as a finalist on a BBC talent show, and how that, in turn, led her to relocate to London, where she ultimately was accepted at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; what she learned from early jobs in the theater alongside the likes of Dame Judi Dench; how her Hamnet performance was shaped by her prior filmmaking experiences, including The Bride!, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s reimagining of Bride of Frankenstein opening March 6, plus much more.

    You can listen to the conversation via the audio player above or read a lightly edited version of it below.

    * * *

    Jessie, thanks so much for doing the podcast. Can you share where you were born and raised, and what your folks did for a living?

    I was born in Cork, which is the county next to where I grew up. I grew up in Killarney, which is this beautiful town on the west coast of Ireland surrounded by lakes and mountains. In the beginning of my life, I lived in the shed behind my dad’s guest house. Me and my brother and my mom and dad lived in the shed, one bed, rambling around this guest house.

    The guest house was like a hotel?

    Yeah. I think there were 28 rooms. It was an exotic place to grow up because these people from outside of your world come in. Me and my family were reminiscing the other day about what this guest house would bring in. I remember at one point there was this American barbershop quartet that arrived, and I can still remember the song that they were singing [sings it]; and then we’d be part of serving and making the beds. Yeah, it was really a bit like an Alice in Wonderland place, but it was also a job.

    We just got a sampling of your beautiful voice. Vocal talent runs in the family as well?

    Well, my mom is a musician. She works as a music psychotherapist for people in palliative care, and she is a harpist and a singer. When I was a tiny baby, she had gone to London to try and become an opera singer, and we lived in this convent in Roehampton in London, because obviously every Irish family has a nun in their family. [Laughs] I remember she’d go off to do workshops in Covent Garden, and I’d be looked after by the nuns, my dad waiting around London. And her singing and how she performed — it’s what I’ve always tried to reach for in telling stories, needing to tell a story as a way of emancipating something in yourself that you probably don’t even understand what it is. But I have such a strong memory of seeing her sing in church and feeling like it was essential to her. I viscerally remember how she would touch people so much that these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes and want to say, “Thank you.” And that was probably the beginning of me going, “Whatever that is, I want to do that.”

    Could you just as easily have wound up focusing on singing as acting?

    I honestly never thought I would be just an actress. I never in a million years thought I’d make a movie.

    Even with all the Irish greats like Maureen O’Hara?

    No, that was like a fairy tale. Nobody gets to do that! I was exposed to music, but I was also, very early, exposed to theater and musical theater, because there was an amateur dramatics company in my hometown. I really remember going to see my first play, Jesus Christ Superstar. I thought music had the capacity to hold the amount of feeling I felt inside me when I was a kid — until I met Shakespeare.

    From what I’ve read, you started doing school plays and summer theater programs and things like that from a pretty early age. Were teachers and classmates saying, “You should become an actress”?

    They were. Largely people really encouraged me, especially my parents. There was never, “You should do something safe.” I think they saw how much this meant to me, even at such a young age. Obviously, a few people would be like, “Just make sure you get all your exams…” But I found school incredibly stressful. I just couldn’t learn linearly like that. And formulaically, I mean, my mind is wild.

    There are fork-in-the-road moments in many people’s lives, and it seems like there was one for you around the time you first auditioned for drama school. Can you take me through that?

    First, to preface it, I used to watch, on repeat, Judi Dench sing “Send in the Clowns.” If you haven’t watched it, you should — the one in Royal Albert Hall, at a Sondheim event — because it’s such a powerful performance, such a simple performance. She just sits on a stool and there’s a spotlight. I might be wrong, but I think she had just lost her husband. And you see somebody distill themselves down to the rawness of their own humanity inside the vessel of a story, and at times you think she’s not going to survive. You can also see her reaching out, like there’s a journey that’s happening beyond herself. I couldn’t understand it. I just wanted to do that. It was so pure. I think I’d heard that she’d gone to one of these drama schools, Mountview or Guildford, the two best musical theater drama schools in the UK, so I applied and went over to do the auditions. My first audition was at the Guildford School of Music and Drama, and that was the one I really wanted to go to. And they wouldn’t let me in. They told me right away.

    That was crushing?

    Yeah, it broke my heart. But those moments are really important because I think you begin to have a conversation with yourself about, That it’s a long journey. It’s a marathon, your life. It’s not something that just instantaneously happens. And they were absolutely right not to let me in.

    Why do you say that?

    Because I wasn’t ready, and it wasn’t probably meant to be for me — musical theater — like just that. But it crushed me. I had another audition, for Mountview, coming up the following weekend. But on the weekend that I didn’t get into Guilford, there was an open audition for a TV talent show called I’d Do Anything, which was looking for somebody to play Nancy in a West End production of Oliver Twist. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh and Barry Humphries were involved. I joined the queue for that on the weekend that I didn’t get into Guilford, to practice for my Mountview audition that was coming up, with no expectation at all. And I ended up coming in second.

    This was in 2008, you were 17, the show aired on the BBC over the course of 12 weeks, right, starting with thousands of contestants, then 12, and then two. On the one hand, getting to the final two must have felt like an incredible achievement. On the other hand, you’ve said that you came away from that whole process rather depressed.

    I don’t think I was depressed because of the show. I think depression — I’ve used that word in a way to protect myself, but I think it’s a bit general around what I was experiencing outside of what that show was, which was a woman discovering herself — a young woman discovering her body, being out in a world, and really asking questions about who she was, what she wanted to say, what her mind thought about things, what she was going to offer the world. Not from an idea of what it is to be accepted by the world, but actually really from the inside of herself. And for me, that was a very uncomfortable moment of self-discovery. There were moments of huge lows and huge highs, in a very public space.

    Was your family throughout this whole time able to be with you in London, or were they back in Ireland?

    They were back at home, because my mom had just had a baby. But in the best way, I was getting to peek behind the curtain — I thought I would at least have to be 50 to be allowed to be peek behind the curtain — and all of a sudden I was doing the thing that I saw my mom do, that I experienced when I saw my first ever play. I was part of it! That was extraordinary to me. I was very raw with my feelings at that time, and I had no structure or technique around me, and I was in this new city, which was incredibly exciting because I could reinvent myself, and I did. And if somebody said, “Do you want to come through that door?” I’d be like, “Yeah, sure. What’s behind that door?” And sometimes that was dangerous and I probably shouldn’t have gone through that door, but it was a real moment of discovery. I’ve become a mom recently, and the thing that it’s reminded me of is awe. Awe isn’t just like bliss. It’s actually quite a vulnerable state because you’re in such discovery. And in many moments of my life, I’ve felt that rawness of discovery and of awe. I look at that young woman and I think, “You are so brave.” I don’t know if I would be able to do that now in such an open-hearted way. I hope I would, but I don’t know.

    So you didn’t get to play the part of Oliver, but it seems like Cameron Mackintosh still had significant interest and confidence in you. How did RADA — the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London — enter the picture?

    RADA entered the picture from Cameron Mackintosh, in such an incredible generous act. After I finished doing the show [I’d Do Anything], he offered to send me to do a Shakespeare workshop in RADA for four weeks during the summer.

    Now, this was not something he was doing for every contestant. He did it because he saw something in you.

    Yeah, I guess he wanted to nurture something he saw in me. And I went and it changed my life, and it changed how I saw myself. It was the moment that I really recognized myself as an actress, because the power of Shakespeare’s words were bottomless. Music was my only experience of something to fill the fire that I felt inside me until I met Shakespeare and his words, which were just like liquid lava.

    You did attend and graduate from RADA, but there was an interregnum between this four-week session there and then going back 2010 to 2013. What was going on then?

    I never moved back to Ireland after I’d Do Anything. Once I was in London, I just ended up there. It was a great time of my life. My first-ever job was A Little Night Music in the Menier Chocolate Factory with Maureen Lipman, Hannah Waddingham and Alex Hanson. Hannah actually reminds me often that she told me to pick up my costume off the floor, which is very good life lesson. [Laughs] I did many things — worked in markets, sang jazz — but I wanted to go back and train. I wanted to mess up in private. I wanted to study scripts. I wanted to know what cinema was. I wanted to go to the pub on a Friday evening with people my own age.

    I read that, yet again, something about you inspired a belief in somebody else, and you were able to go back to RADA as a full-fledged three-year student?

    Yeah, I am from a family of five, and my parents always did their best, but when you were out [of the home], you were out. I loved that responsibility, but it was hard to live in a city like London and be able to afford it. At the Ivy Club [where she performed], there was a man called Tony who had seen me sing, and he loved theater, and he wanted to support young talent. He said, “I want to help you.” And he very kindly paid for my training at RADA and staying in London. If he didn’t, I probably wouldn’t have been able to stay.

    That’s great that he’s gotten to see that he bet on the right —

    — horse!

    You graduated from RADA in 2013, and quickly began working at a high level in the theater. Your first job was doing Shakespeare at the Globe. Then Henry V with Jude Law and working with Judi Dench in The Winter’s Tale. Would you have been content to spend the rest of your career like that, or was there always an ambition to see what was possible in screen acting as well?

    I don’t know if I’ve ever had my eyes on the horizon like that. I feel like I arrive where I’m at, and I want to be absolutely there. I remember doing Winter’s Tale with Judi Dench and realizing my education hadn’t finished. Every single night, I’d run down to the wings when Judi Dench was doing her piece as Paulina and I’d watch her — I never missed it. I would sit and just watch her and be like, “Come, spirits of Judi Dench, come.”

    Were you able to figure out what makes her so good?

    She’s just deeply human and mischievous. I mean, I don’t know. I just think she has a river to her heart that is in motion, and her container is gigantic.

    Were you curious about screen acting?

    I was definitely curious about it, and I remember those early years in London getting possessed by early cinema — going to the BFI and buying all of Katharine Hepburn’s films and watching The Philadelphia Story, and watching a lot of Spencer Tracy, Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis. And when I was at RADA, this librarian, James, introduced me to Lars Von Trier and Dancer in The Dark and Breaking the Waves, which is the first time I saw Emily Watson [later her costar in Hamnet]. I was probably shy of it. I remember my agent calling me when I was about 22 or 23 saying, “Do you want to go to America? Like do you want to meet some American agents?” I said, “No, I’m not ready.” I think what I meant by that is, “I need to get to know myself in order to meet what that might be. I don’t want to go and not have something to say in that world.”

    That’s a level of self-awareness or humility that’s highly unusual.

    I guess I didn’t really know what that meant anyway, like, “Do you want to go to America?” In the scripts that I choose and the people I work with, I want a visceral reaction that feels embodied. I am nothing without the people that have come before me. Maybe that’s why I watched Katharine Hepburn and Judi Dench; their stories were my education, and I just hadn’t metabolized that yet in myself. But then I do remember the moment I got the script Beast (2017). Those moments are so special and so rare in a career, where the alchemy of where you are meets the alchemy of a story and where that character was — it was such an incredible entry point. It was Michael Pearce’s first film. It was my first film. We were like, “There’s no money. There’s no consequence. You’re making art.” [Laughs] I was playing a young woman who was, I would say, imprisoned in a pretty conservative idealism, and she meets a man who is wild, dangerous, feral, has a monster inside him. I think she recognized something monstrous inside her, too. This collision is very intense, but full of life and disobedience, and ruptures morality. … I’d read that Marion Cotillard had kept the script of Rust and Bone under her bed, so I put the script of Beast under my bed until I got the part.

    Then came the limited series War & Peace (2016) and your breakthrough project, the 2018 film Wild Rose, which was directed by Tom Harper. After that, you were nominated for best newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards and best rising star at the BAFTA Awards. What stands out for you when you think back on that?

    It was my first mother. I’ve played quite a few mothers — disobedient, naughty mothers — and the struggle of that role when you also want to be in the world. It was very small film, but I was surrounded by these incredible musicians. It was such an amazing thing to study country music and the great country music singers like John Prine, Emmylou Harris and Bonnie Raitt, who was a huge thing for me during this.

    The next year, you played an aide to Judy Garland (Renee Zellweger) in Judy, and you were also in an excellent limited series that won a lot of Emmys, Chernobyl, playing a pregnant woman who, along with her husband, was affected by the meltdown.

    What I really remember of working with Renee was how she led a set — that she could do what she did and go to the places that she went, but be in contact with every single person who was working on that set, whether that be the extras or the crew or me. And Chernobyl was a pretty extraordinary experience. The word “Chernobyl” was very much present in my childhood because in Ireland, they have this scheme called Chernobyl Children, where children who had been affected by the nuclear explosion would come and be fostered by Irish families, so I had a really strong relationship with just the word and what that was. But I remember the feeling on set, how it was directed, how it was shot — it felt giant, but also curated. It had a point of view and was a little bit dangerous and beautiful. I loved playing her, this uncompromising lover.

    The next year was I’m Thinking of Ending Things, a very surreal film from Charlie Kaufman in which you’re playing a young woman going to meet her boyfriend’s parents, but then characters’ names and all sorts of things start changing; I’ll also note that it was shot by Łukasz Żal, who later shot Hamnet. And then also that year was season four of TV’s Fargo, in which you played a nurse who was not always great with her patients.

    I’m Thinking of Ending Things — I loved doing that. I mean, I got to go to work with David Thewlis, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette and Charlie Kaufman every day! And Charlie’s worlds are so broad. I think that was probably the first moment where I started working more as an artist than an actor, in a way, because he was questioning so many things, it was really alive. And Fargo? My instinct with her walk came super clearly. I just was like, “She’s a bird [as far as her walk] — she’s obsessed with Edith Piaf [who was nicknamed “The Little Sparrow”] — and also it’s going to be freezing, so I can walk really quickly between takes.” Yeah, it was great fun, that.

    Another big milestone was The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, in 2021. You play the younger version of the academic whom Olivia Colman plays at a later stage of her life. You were, I believe, suggested to Maggie by Olivia, whom you already knew?

    We’d met at a festival, we’d got drunk. [laughs]

    Always good way to break the ice! In giving the performance that brought you your first Oscar nomination, was there any sort of coordination between you and Olivia, in playing the same character at different stages of her life?

    Other than the accent — that’s all we talked about — and I love Maggie not shoehorning us in. Maggie has been and is one of the most important women in my life, because I think she’s looking to fill the spaces that we [women] are not allowed to fill or haven’t been allowed to fill. She wants the full story. She wants the shadowy bits to come to the surface so that as a woman, you’re not deciphered off. And especially in this role. This is a woman who really is hungry. Her mind is hungry, her body’s hungry. I felt she loves being a mother, but she also wants to be a woman in the world. And that’s the truth, right? It’s not always going to be easy. I think Maggie provoked the most uncomfortable questions in order to realize something.

    That same year going into the next year, you had a real triumph on the stage with Eddie Redmayne in Cabaret, winning the Olivier for that. That led into 2022, in which the theme of your projects was toxic masculinity, between a movie called Men, written and directed by Alex Garland, and then a movie called Women Talking, written and directed by Sarah Polley, which took a similar path to the one later taken by Hamnet, from Telluride to the Oscars.

    Yeah, that was really interesting. In Men, it’s a fable, it’s a fever dream, it’s a genre piece, but a kind of nightmare, in which a woman is invaded by toxic masculinity. And then I got offered Women Talking at the same time, and Mariche was a woman who was actually in the opposite place of where (Men‘s) Harper was. She was a woman who was defending her experience in a patriarchy and in a violent space. I was very curious about what both these things might reveal to me.

    Both of these films were coming right on the heels of the beginning of the #MeToo era. That’s not a coincidence, right?

    No. I believe the stories came from the culture that was surrounding us at that time, and it was super interesting, and I loved doing them. I mean, they were very intense pieces to do, and Women Talking and playing that character shook me in a way that I didn’t expect. When I got that script, I almost didn’t believe that it could be possible — I was like, “Who’s going to watch women talking? Twelve women in an attic in Mennonite dresses?” It was a pretty amazing experience.

    We will soon see you in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s next film, The Bride!, which is apparently a new interpretation of Bride of Frankenstein.

    I think doing Bride and playing in a sandpit that was bigger than I had played in many ways — in working with Christian [Bale] and with Maggie, it’s the biggest budget film I’ve ever done — it felt like it was such an embodied experience that something got born in me a little bit. In other iterations, she’s born to be a wife, but without any autonomy, with no voice, with not even an option to say “No” — she just screams, which, if you didn’t get the picture from that, we’ve got some serious problems! They didn’t do The Bride 2 after that; they were like, “Oh, shit. We’re in some dodgy territory here. This girl is screaming? Shut it down!” [Laughs] Really, this is about love: “If you really want to love, and if you really want to be in a relationship with me, how much of me can you actually love? Not just the nice bit, the bit that’s palatable to you. You want to know the truth? This is the truth.” It cracked me wide open and brought me to my knees. Maggie was ferociously in it with me and demanding of me. And Christian was the same.

    Would you have played Hamnet‘s Agnes the same way had you not done The Bride! right before?

    I think she would have been absolutely different if I hadn’t done The Bride! before. And I had two weeks after I finished Bride going into Hamnet — that’s all I had. I came to rehearsals with bleached eyebrows — they were having production meetings about my eyebrows, wondering if they’d grow back or change color. And actually, the [creative] muscle was very alive. [Laughs] It was a gift. I had this love, and I also was deeply, uncompromisingly embodied in myself, which Agnes is. She is in touch with her elemental force.

    I believe that you and Chloé Zhao, Hamnet‘s director, first crossed paths at the Telluride Film Festival that you attended with Women Talking. Maybe Paul Mescal was there, too, that year —

    I think he was there for Aftersun that year.

    Did you two know each other before you were cast in this? Was there any test before you were cast?

    We knew each other a little bit. We’d both been in Lost Daughter, but we hadn’t actually worked together in that. And then just from being Irish. But we didn’t know each other. We did do a chemistry test together. And that was very, very exciting. It was actually a great way to start that relationship, because there was unknowability and incredible possibility and a real care and trust and a meeting of minds. There was no hierarchy. We were going to jump off the cliff. And wherever either of us was being led, I think we both instinctively felt that we would hold each other in that exploration and go there with each other. And that’s how we moved through the whole filming.

    As you alluded to earlier, you’ve recently become a mother for the first time, so congratulations on that. When you made Hamnet, you had not yet become a mother. Was that important? I mean, you weren’t previously the bride of a monster either.

    I have never died and been reinvigorated, for any of our listeners who are concerned how Method I was. [Laughs] Sometimes as an actor, you do those stupid things where you buy a book on how to be a Tudor, and you read a page and you think, “Oh no, it’s pointless,” and it lives on your shelf and gathers dust. The midwife in the film was actually a real midwife, so she came and spoke to us and talked about that, and that was helpful. But when I was working on this and when I was really trying to find Agnes’s language in her unconscious, I did a lot of writing and I really was listening to my dreams a lot, using my dreams as compasses for the scenes and for the relationships.

    From talking to Chloe, you were the one who inspired her to incorporate dream work with everyone on Hamnet, right?

    Yeah.

    There are things that I’ve heard about her doing with the actors — and everybody — on the set that I’d never heard of anyone else doing on a film, like a guided meditation or something to start the day. There’s a behind-the-scenes photo that’s been released of you preparing to do one of the birthing scenes out in the forest, and Chloé seems to be lying down next to you. That’s not exactly conventional, but it clearly worked! It seems like you and Chloé are on the same wavelength, in terms of being open to outside-the-usual-box ideas.

    Yeah. I want to ground what that might sound like, because that feels a bit untangible. In the same way with school, I’m not good with linear thought and a projected idea, I don’t know who my character is until I’ve lived inside them. But you still have to stir the waters a little bit. And I find dreams, or even taking a scene in a script as if it was a dream, and writing around that in an abstract way, just stirs the water to help you enter into an essence of where you think you might travel. Because in the best moments, you don’t know where your final destination is going to be, which happened time and time again on this set — like the end, and the scream at [her character’s son] Hamnet’s death.

    The scream — was that in the script?

    No, that wasn’t in the script. And also, those moments don’t come from just an empty space. We’d gone on an absolute ginormous journey by the time I got to that place, and I was in a really strong relationship with Jacobi [Jupe, who played Hamnet]. But I don’t know, man, you look into his face and you’ve gone on this journey? I think that scream came out on the second of three takes, and I didn’t expect that. We all know grief, in a way, and I don’t know how to describe what that was. It was out of body, but absolutely catalyzed by this incredible young boy in front of me who was with me every step of the way, and vice-versa. And those moments — they’re very rare, and they’re an amazing thing to even touch the side of it.

    And then the scene at the end, which is single-handedly responsible for the stock of Kleenex skyrocketing, with your hand reaching towards the stage. I wonder, again, where, emotionally, that came from, and if Agnes has ever seen her husband’s work on the stage before that day.

    No, I didn’t believe she had seen her husband’s work. I mean, their relationship was really incredible. And I think she had the foresight to know that this man has so much inside him that is bigger than the place that they live, and even their relationship, and he needs somewhere to share that. But I was intimidated by that. Was it [intimidating] to walk into that place, the Globe, where you have access to heaven and earth and 400 strangers who are holding a piece of paper that contains the name of your son who’s lost, and you can’t find him? Yeah, it was hard. Where the pin dropped is, you are in the most intense, isolated experience of grief, where you’ve really, you can’t find your son, you can’t find your husband in your heart. And I realized through Max Richter’s music, “On the Nature of Daylight,” on day four, that I was not on my own, I was surrounded by 400 other people who’ve probably experienced grief. And she realizes that her husband has pulled off the greatest magic trick of her life, that he has reincarnated her lost son through the vessel of a story, that he’s immortalized in his nature by this story. Which I think when we get affected by a story in a film or in a piece of theater, that’s our experience. We can’t even really understand why, but it’s touched us. I think that’s what got revealed in us as we were moving through that last sequence.

    For Hamnet, you have won a ton of awards and are nominated for an Oscar. Everybody in this business has seen the film and is talking about it. But my sense is that you’re quite a private person and not really seeking attention. So what are you making of this moment? Are you able to enjoy it?

    I have very different moments at different times. Sometimes you can’t take it in. Sometimes you’re just changing a nappy, and you’re really grateful for that nappy, like, “I’m a real person, I’m a real person!” And then you have moments where you’re like, “What?! This doesn’t happen in a life.” I had that moment yesterday at the Oscar Nominees Luncheon, when everybody was getting up on that stage to be in the class photograph. There was something so innocent about it, but also, I’m there with Paul Thomas Anderson and Chloe and Delroy Lindo, these incredible artists. In my wildest imagination when I was a young woman, I never thought I would be remotely near that. And yes, the Critics Choice and Golden Globes, they’re scary: People spend two hours after you’ve changed a nappy trying to make you look great, when you feel like, “I wish the ground would swallow me up” or “How am I meant to be in these rooms? I shouldn’t be here.” But then you get into these rooms and you know that everybody’s just made something, and to make anything at all is an absolute triumph. I’m so proud and honored to stand beside these incredible artists who have inspired me throughout my life in ways that I don’t think I have the vocabulary or the ability to tell them. This is like a moment in time, and I’ll move on, and I’ll make more things. We only get one life. And I think when I look back I will go, “Oh my God!”