Florence Pugh is a talented actress that has captivated audiences with her performances in films like Lady Macbeth and Little Women. She recently opened up about the emotional cost of her craft, revealing how her role in Midsommar pushed her to her limits.
She explained on the Reign with Josh Smith podcast: “There have been some roles where I’ve given too much and I’ve been broken for a long while afterwards.”
Among those roles, her haunting portrayal of Dani in Ari Aster’s Midsommar, which is one of the most challenging experiences of her career.
In the folk horror film, Pugh plays a grief-stricken woman who joins her boyfriend on a surreal trip to a Swedish festival, only to find herself caught in a descent into terror, madness, and violence.
The role demanded an intense level of emotional immersion, which left the actress grappling with its aftermath. She admitted: “I definitely felt like I abused myself in the places that I got myself to go.”
Reflecting on the experience, Pugh revealed how she learned to set boundaries for her mental health. “The nature of figuring these things out is you need to go, ‘Alright, well, I can’t do that again because that was too much.
“But then I look at that performance and I’m really proud of what I did, and I’m proud of what came out of me. I don’t regret it. But, yeah, there’s definitely things that you have to respect about yourself.”
This isn’t the first time Pugh has talked about the challenges of Midsommar. In an interview with The Sunday Times, she opened up about the extreme techniques she used to embody Dani’s grief, imagining heartbreaking scenarios involving her loved ones.
She described envisioning “family members in coffins, going to an open casket funeral for my siblings,” which often left her hyperventilating on set.
Even after filming wrapped, the emotional residue of the character stuck with her. Pugh recalled the difficulty of letting go, saying: “When I did it, I was so wrapped up in her. I’d never played someone that was in that much pain before, and I would put myself in really shit situations that maybe other actors don’t need to do.”
Despite the toll it took on Pugh, her performance in Midsommar is one of the strongest she’s delivered. While she’s proud what she brought to the role, it also something she never wants to experience again.
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