Credit: A24

Florence Pugh on ‘Midsommar’ role: “I definitely abused my own self”

Fri 31 March 2023 14:22, UK

Actor Florence Pugh has mentioned not being proud of some of the work she put herself through for Midsommar. The film was the second psychological horror movie directed by Ari Aster, following his debut with 2018’s Hereditary and star Pugh in one of her breakthrough roles.

In the film, Pugh plays Dani, an American psychology student who suffers a breakdown when on vacation with her toxic boyfriend on a trip to Sweden. When speaking to the Off Menu podcast, Pugh talked about absorbing into the role too much, remembering, “I’d never played someone that was in that much pain before, and 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”.

As filming progressed, Pugh remembered following the storyline’s dark path by imagining different horrible scenarios, continuing, “I was putting things in my head that were getting worse and more bleak. I think by the end I probably, most definitely abused my own self in order to get that performance”.

By the time filming had wrapped, Pugh had gone immediately to Boston for her role in Little Women, which received several Oscar nominations, including one for ‘Best Picture’. As she took her seat on the plane to the US, Pugh did look back on her work on Midsommar with a tinge of regret, saying, “I felt like I’d left [Dani] in that field in that state. I definitely felt like I’d left her there in that field to be abused”.

Pugh’s latest film A Good Person had a limited release on March 24th, and she is set to appear in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer on July 21st.