Seconds after director Chloé Zhao called cut on the final, wrenching scene of Hamnet , the beat dropped as Rihanna’s “We Found Love” filled an intricate reproduction of the Globe Theater near London. The stars went first— Paul Mescal onstage playing young “Will” Shakespeare, Jessie Buckley stunning in the front row as his wild-hearted wife, Agnes, and Joe Alwyn as her brother, Bartholomew—surrendering to dance. Then the cast and crew joined in, with hundreds of Renaissance-costumed extras jumping and shaking in Elizabethan ecstasy.

“Wigs were lost” as the troupe vibed together, Zhao remembers. “You get that from taking mushrooms, you get that from making love.” And yes, says the 43-year-old filmmaker, serene as a yoga teacher: “You get that from dancing.”

Zhao is curled on a co

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