Chloé Zhao

And it makes you stay still.

And when you stay still, you have nowhere to go but into the underworld and into yourself, where all your shadows are.

So I knew in my 40s, this is the right place, right kind of nature for me to dive deep in.

And...

When it comes to the forest in Wales, in terms of inspiration, when I first visited that forest with my cinematographer, Lukasz, we wanted to go to find the language for the film or just let the forest tell us what the film is about beyond what we read in the book.

So nature, we consider nature an HOD, a department head.

It's constantly working with us.

I think the reason why the producers and also Maggie chose me is because I don't feel that way about William Shakespeare.

I don't have the same reverence.

I do have reverence intellectually, but I don't have the burden on my shoulders as many people in the West do.

Maybe the same as I am with, you know, cowboys or westerns, right?

I watched only two and a half westerns when I made The Rider.

But I watched more afterwards because I fell in love with it.

And it's the same, I'm probably going to be doing more Shakespeare-related things after this.

But I didn't come feeling that he's any different than...

A man who fell in love with a woman and couldn't quite express his feelings.

So I never... The pressure is on the actors.

It's on Paul, who does have a lot of reverence.

In the sense that not only what we put him through, not only playing William Shakespeare, but also...

telling the story of Orpheus' uterine disease as William Shakespeare.