“Eternals prepared me for Hamnet because it’s world-building,” Zhao told Vanity Fair while promoting her new film. “Before that, I had only done films that existed in the real world. I also learned what to do and not to do — what’s realistic and what isn’t.” She elaborated, “Eternals had, like, an unlimited amount of money and resources. And here [in Hamnet] we have one street corner that we can afford, to [stand in for] Stratford…. Eternals didn’t have a lot of limitations, and that is actually quite dangerous. Because we only have that street corner, suddenly everything has meaning.”