A Quiet Place: Day One star Lupita Nyong’o has revealed she personally asked Taylor Swift to clear the use of Shake it Off for a movie.

Nyong’o revealed the story behind the use of Shake it Off in the 2019 horror comedy Little Monsters whilst on Hot Ones. In that movie, Nyong’o plays the upbeat teacher, Miss Caroline. She ends up protecting her class of kids from a zombie outbreak. The song is part of a singalong in the movie when Miss Caroline performs it on the ukulele.

For Nyong’o, having the song in the film was a personal priority.

Lupita Nyong’o Shakes Off negativity

“I was going through a lot of self-doubt because it was the second thing I had done. I was getting a little depressed. My best friend came to London, and Taylor had just released ‘Shake It Off.’ And he played it for me to like get me into better spirits, and we just jumped on my bed, and we just danced and danced, and it lifted my spirits.”

When reading the script for Little Monsters, she was excited at the idea of playing it. However, it wouldn’t have happened if Nyong’o hadn’t personally sought to get it in the film.

“When they came, and they told me, ‘Aw, no, we can’t get the rights,’ I decided, ‘OK. I’m going to go, I’m going to make a pitch, I’m going to let Taylor know what this song means to me,’ and I told her that story about how it lifted me from an almost depression, and the next thing I knew, it was cleared,”

It’s been five years since that first horror role. Lupita Nyong’o would garner critical acclaim that same year thanks to a dazzling double turn in Jordan Peele’s Us.

She’s back in the genre in 2024 in the prequel A Quiet Place: Day One. She plays Sammy, a woman who joins up with a man named Eric (Joseph Quinn) and a cat named Frodo to survive an alien invasion in New York.