Florence Pugh has revealed that she “definitely abused” herself in order to deliver her performance for Ari Aster’s 2019 horror film, Midsommar.
Speaking on Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster, the 27-year-old actor explained that she put herself in a dark state of mind in an effort to tap into her character Dani, the psychology-student-turned-psychological-case-study who descends into traumatic chaos throughout the film.
“I’d never played someone that was in that much pain before,” she said. “I would put myself in really shitty situations that maybe other actors don’t need to do, but I would just be imagining the worst things. Each day the content would be getting more weird and harder to do. I was putting things in my head that were getting worse and more bleak. I think by the end I probably, most definitely abused myself in order to get that performance.”
Pugh — who’s known for her impassioned performances — even recalled that the process of saying goodbye to the Midsommar set and crew was difficult because of the emotional attachment she had created to her character.
“I remember looking [out the plane] and feeling immense guilt because I felt like I’d left [Dani] in that field in that [emotional] state,” she said. “It’s so weird. I’ve never had that before… Obviously, that’s probably a psychological thing where I felt immense guilt for what I’d put myself through, but I definitely felt like I’d left her there in that field to be abused… I had created such a sad person, and then felt guilty that I had created that person.”
While Pugh is clear in stating that the abuse was her own doing, she also referenced some less-than-ideal conditions from shooting Midsommar, including hot temperatures. Yet, she explained that she feels like the experience was what it needed to be for the artistic product. “We were shooting in a very hot field with three different languages, so I wouldn’t say that all of it was pleasurable,” she said. “[But] also, it shouldn’t be. Why would making a movie like that be pleasurable?”
Recently, Pugh starred alongside Morgan Freeman in Zach Braff’s A Good Person — read more about that film and watch the trailer here.
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