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Florence Pugh is getting vulnerable and opening up about the emotional impact of filming Midsommar, saying, “It really fucked me up.”
The Oscar-nominated actress shared during a recent interview on The Louis Theroux Podcast that playing Dani in the Ari Aster-directed film led to six months of depression. After a devastating family tragedy, her character joins her toxic boyfriend on a trip to a remote Swedish commune, where she ends up having a psychological breakdown after being the target of a cult’s manipulation.
“I just can’t exhaust myself like that because it has a knock-on effect,” she admitted. “I think [Midsommar] made me sad for like six months after and I didn’t know why I was depressed. I got back after shootingLittle Women, which was such a fun experience and obviously a completely different tone from Midsommar, so I think shelved all of that. 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.”
Pugh said she “had never seen that level of grief or mental health in the way that was being asked of me on the page,” which led her to go all in on the role to fully understand the “horrible state” of Dani’s life.
“I really put myself through it,” she explained. “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.’ 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,” the Thunderbolts star continued. “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 hell. But I don’t do that anymore. It really fucked me up.”
Pugh said she initially realized how much playing a distraught character impacted her while on a flight, heading to film Greta Gerwig’s Little Women after wrapping Midsommar. She recalled breaking down in tears because she felt like she had left Dani “in that field with the film crew just filming her cry.”
“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 We Live in Time actress admitted. “It was very, very strange.”