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By Lydia Patrick
Life & Trends Reporter
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Hamnet stars Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley have sparked backlash after a resurfaced interview revealed their strongly negative feelings toward cats.
In November, Mescal, 30, and Buckley, 36, appeared on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast while promoting their film Hamnet. During the conversation, both actors openly admitted they were not fond of felines—comments that have since caused an uproar among animal lovers.
"F*** cats, honestly. F**^ them," Normal People star Mescal said, while Buckley revealed she did not like them either, offering an anecdote that particularly angered some pet owners.
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"My husband, when I started dating him, he had two cats," she said. "This is bad so I’m going to get canceled. But one of the cats was, like, a pedigree model bitch. And she staged like a coup against me. I’d come home and there’d just be, like, poo on the pillow. And I was like, ‘It’s me or the cats.’"
"I won," Buckley added.
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Both actors are receiving major awards‑season attention for Hamnet, the historical drama directed by Chloé Zhao. Buckley recently won Best Actress at the Critics Choice Awards for her performance as Agnes Shakespeare, while Mescal’s portrayal of William Shakespeare has been widely cheered.
The film itself has earned multiple nominations across the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards and Oscars, cementing both leads as key figures of this year’s awards landscape.
Newsweek reached out to Buckley and Mescal's publicists for comment via email.
Reddit Reacts
The resurfaced clip was reposted on the subreddit r/Fauxmoi, where it immediately triggered strong reactions from cat lovers.
"If a partner made me choose between them and their pets (edit: and allergies weren’t the issue), I'm sorry but I'm picking my pets. Not only are they living things that I've taken responsibility for, but that's a red flag that they could be super controlling about other things too," shared one user.
"Yeah, it doesn't really matter to me what kind of pet—it could be a snake or a frog, I still think it's a red flag to give someone an ultimatum involving living things," said Any-Clothes3312.
"Good grief. I’ll never understand why cats have this bad PR of being mean. There’s no way these people haven’t met badly trained dogs that bark all day and are aggressive and awful—but it’s never ALL DOGS are awful. Dogs get the grace that personalities vary between each animal that cats don’t get," added another feline defender.
"Not everyone has to love cats, but it’s always a bit off‑putting when someone enthusiastically offers up their hatred of any animal and especially when they seem offended that they’ve been asked—like being mistaken for a potential cat person is an insult," shared another user.
"This is so gross and disgusting," said Max.
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