There is a quiet rigor to the world of Hamnet. Domestic spaces carry the weight of labor long before they carry the weight of tragedy. In her Oscar-nominated production design, Fiona Crombie does not romanticize the late 16th century — she creates a home that feels worked-in rather than arranged, intimate rather than picturesque.
That commitment to material truth becomes even more striking in the film’s recreation of the Globe Theatre. Rather than presenting it as the grand cultural monument it later became, Crombie imagines its earliest days and approaches the space as both workplace and crucible — a site of creative vitality that stands in deliberate tension with the private grief unfolding at home.
Throughout Hamnet, design operates as emotional infrastructure. Rooms narrow as loss closes in. Two beds become one. Light filters through warped glass and uneven timber, reinforcing a sense of enclosure. Even negative space — an unoccupied chair, an unlit hearth — registers as absence. Crombie’s work understands that grief is not simply felt; it is housed.
In conversation with Awards Buzz, Crombie discusses the research behind reconstructing the Globe, the practical and emotional challenges of depicting the loss of a child, embracing joy on Chloé Zhao’s set, and how production design came to reflect the film’s most intangible theme: the architecture of loss.
