Florence Pugh has been honest in previous interviews about not planning to do roles like “Midsommar” again because she abused her mental health in order to play the character (in this case it was Dani, a grief-stricken American woman who has a psychological breakdown when she joins her toxic boyfriend on a trip). Now in a new interview on “The Louis Theroux Podcast,” the Oscar nominee reveals the emotional exhaustion of filming “Midsommar” led to six months of depression.
“I just can’t exhaust myself like that because it has a knock-on effect,” Pugh said. “I think [‘Midsommar’] made me sad for like six months after and I didn’t know why I was depressed. 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. 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.”
“Midsommar” was “Hereditary” filmmaker Ari Aster’s second feature directorial effort. The movie required Pugh to play a character “in such a horrible state in her life,” the actor explained, and Pugh responded by diving head first into Dani’s emotional breakdown.
“I had never seen that level of grief or mental health in the way that was being asked of me on the page,” Pugh said on the podcast. “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.’ 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 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.”
After “Midsommar” wrapped, Pugh traveled immediately to the Boston set of Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women.” The Oscar nominee was overcome with emotion during the switch between movies and even broke down in tears on the flight to “Little Women’s” Boston set when it dawned on her that she was leaving Dani in the past.
“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,” Pugh said. “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.”
Any abuse that Pugh suffered during the making of “Midsommar” was strictly self-inflicted and had nothing to do with Aster. She’s always had nothing but praise for the director, once telling The New York Times last year that he’s “peculiar in a mad genius kind of a way” and “a stand-up comedian at heart.” She added, “Once you laugh at one thing, he will try and make you laugh at all the other things. He’ll keep going and everybody will be crying in fits of laughter.”
“The Louis Theroux Podcast” is available on Spotify now.
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