Was Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali dancing to “Too Close” by Next on your 2023 bingo card? Not ours either!

We asked the two and their co-stars, Ethan Hawke and Myha’la about that and much more in our Shadow and Act interview about Netflix’s Leave the World Behind.

We spoke to the two, as well as director/writer Sam Esmail and the book’s author, Rumaan Alam about the film, its themes and more.

On the dance sequence, Ali told us, “After we get past the initial embarrassment of fear, it was actually a blast, because Julia’s great to work with. And then you feel like it’s pushing the story along in a way that the film kind of needed a little bit. It’s marching along in such a way that it needs a little respite from that intensity and then it kind of gets back to it, you know, pretty quickly.”

Roberts said, “First of all, Sam is such a music head. His musical catalog is quite diverse. And I thought [this song] was great because it’s known, but it hasn’t really been used a lot and it was something that could have been on Myha’la’s character’s DJ shelf, and it made both [our characters] in that scene kind of uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable. There was a lot to it and it’s very challenging to do drunken dancing [and] performing in front of Mahershala Ali. It was very challenging for me [laughs].”

Check out the full interview above.

The film is now streaming on Netflix.