Florence Pugh has shared the reality of the emotional toll one role took on her and explained why she wouldn’t be taking similar roles again.
She’s been open about it
The Thunderbolts actress has previously shared that she doesn’t plan on taking on roles like her character Dani in Midsommar again, and has now explained why.
In the 2019 movie, Pugh’s character Dani is a grief-stricken woman who has a psychological breakdown while on a bizarre trip with her toxic boyfriend.
Filming was exhausting for her
In a Tuesday, November 11 appearance on The Louis Theroux Podcast, Pugh revealed that filming Midsommar led her to fall into six months of depression.
“I just can’t exhaust myself like that because it has a knock-on effect,” she said as she explained why she wouldn’t be taking on similar roles in the future.
The work she had afterwards helped her though it
“I think [Midsommar] made me sad for like six months after and I didn’t know why I was depressed,” Pugh said.
“I got back after shooting Little Women, which was such a fun experience and obviously a completely different tone from Midsommar, so I think shelved all of that.”
Pugh couldn’t shake off the sadness
“And then when I got home for Christmas, I was so depressed and I was like, ‘Oh, I think that’s from Midsommar,‘ and I didn’t deal with it and I probably shouldn’t do that again,” she said.
The horror movie required Pugh to play a character ‘in such a horrible state in her life’.
She had to get into the right mindset
Pugh wanted to dive into the character’s mindset which took a toll on her own.
“I had never seen that level of grief or mental health in the way that was being asked of me on the page,” she said referring to the emotional breakdown her character goes through.
So she put herself ‘through it’
“So for that, I really put myself through it. At the beginning, I just imagined hearing the news that one of my siblings had died, and then towards the middle of the shoot it was like, ‘Oh no, I actually needed to imagine the coffins,’” Pugh said.
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“And then towards the end of the shoot, I actually was going to my whole family’s funeral. It wasn’t just crying. I needed to sound pained.”
Pugh now avoids roles similar to this
“I’d never done anything like that before and I was like, ‘OK, well here’s my opportunity. I need to give this a go.’ And I would just basically put myself through h***. But I don’t do that anymore. It really f***** me up,” Pugh said.
Having had to ‘manipulate’ herself to get into character, Pugh said she couldn’t shake it off for a while after.
She felt ‘sorry’ for herself over it
“My brain was obviously feeling sympathy for myself because I’d abused myself and really manipulated my own emotions to get a performance, but I also then felt sorry for what I’d done,” the actress admitted.
The ‘abuse’ she suffered was self-inflicted
“It was very, very strange and I’ve never ever been worried about my characters from the day that I finish. But [Dani] was the one that I felt like I’d left her in that field with the film crew just filming her cry,” Pugh added.
The actress put herself through emotional torment for the role and seems to regret having done that to herself.
