It’s Good to Be the King – Make That the Prince.

One of Shakespeare’s most-adapted plays,there have been over 50 film versions made of Hamlet – from classics like Laurence Olivier‘s 1948 version, which won Best Picture and Best Actor, to Franco Iziffirelli‘s 1990 film, starring mel Gibson and Glenn Closeto family friendly interpretations like Disney’s The Lion King.

This year is no exception, with a trio of films inspired by the famous play making the rounds of the fall festivals, each with its own spin on the classic: Rice Ahmed‘s Hamlet, Oscar Isaac‘s King Hamlet documentary, and chloé Zhao‘s Hamnet. The convergence of the films at Telluride led to a conversation among four actors who have played Hamlet: ahmed, Isaac, Ethan hawkeand Andrew Scott.

The Absent Father: A Recurring Theme

“It costs you something. Sometimes it costs you things you could never have imagined… That’s not what performing Hamlet is.”

“I think what Hamlet deals with,and it’s something that’s so resonant in our culture right now,which why I think is all these Hamlet stories being told right now,is the idea of the absent father,” explained Ahmed. “Hamlet is a man who doesn’t have a template of manhood he can step into. And so when you’ve got this unmoored sense of manhood, it can be destructive, it can be panicking, it can be frenetic.”

That’s what makes it such a tempting role for actors. “I think there can be a lot of preconceptions around that actors want to do Hamlet because they’re feeling themselves, and yes, it’s the best part ever written,” Ahmed continued.”But it costs you something. Sometimes it costs you things you could never have imagined, and it demands a part of you to show up that any sense of vanity or like, ‘Yo, this is me with the top down.’ That’s not what performing Hamlet is.”

Making it New: The Challenge for Actors

The challenge is, then, to make it new for audiences given that it’s been so widely interpreted. “There’s a reason why humanity keeps vibrating off it,” said Hawke. “It keeps being relevant.It’s a problem that it’s so well known, because you want the audience to experience it viscerally. That’s our job, to make it new.”

Scott agreed. “Somebody said a really brilliant thing where Hamlet, the role, is like a jug, and you pour in the actor’s personality, and that jug will take any number of different types of performance,” he said.”I love now that Hamlet‘s being interpreted by lots of people of different genders and ages. Because I really do think it holds it, because it’s so brilliant.”