Jessie Buckley says Rihanna’s “We Found Love” helped keep the cast of Hamnet emotionally steady during some very heavy days of filming. Speaking on The Late Show, the film’s lead explained that director Chloé Zhao organized weekly dance breaks so the actors could blow off steam after intense scenes.

Buckley described those sessions as a deliberate reset — an hour at the end of the week when Zhao would crank up the speakers and let the ensemble move. Paul Mescal and the rest of the company would join in, and whether it was the core cast or hundreds of extras in period costume, everyone would form an exuberant, cathartic mosh pit to Rihanna’s track.

Released in late November, Hamnet adapts the acclaimed novel that reimagines the lives of William Shakespeare and his family. In the film, Mescal portrays Shakespeare while Buckley plays Agnes Hathaway; the story includes the real-life tragedy of the couple’s son Hamnet, who died at 11 — a loss that would later echo in Shakespeare’s writing of Hamlet.

Although the production captured footage of the cast dancing, Buckley said they can’t legally share that material because securing the rights to “We Found Love” is prohibitively expensive. The song, which features production by Calvin Harris, dominated the Billboard Hot 100 for 10 weeks in the early 2010s.

Laughing about the situation on Colbert’s show, Buckley admitted she’s become a bit of a broken record asking for permission to use the clip. Host Stephen Colbert cheekily appealed directly to Rihanna, urging her to “do a solid” and let them release the dance footage.

Watch Buckley’s full interview with Colbert in the embedded clip above.

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