Margaret Qualley reveals damage to her face caused by ‘The Substance’ prosthetics
The Substance star Margaret Qualley opened up about the long-term damage that wearing prosthetics for the movie caused her face.
In the film, which also features Demi Moore in the lead role, Qualley plays Sue, a new identity forged by Moore’s character, Elisabeth Sparkle, an ageing television presenter who discovers a mysterious drug that allows her to transform her image.
However, the prosthetics needed for Qualley to play the role had a severe impact on the actor. During the latest episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, she revealed director Coralie Fargeat was forced to keep her face out of certain shots due to the severity of the damage.
Qualley shared: “At the end, when they’re shooting up my skirt in the beginning credits, and it’s like the palm trees all around, and they have all these long lenses from the bottom, that’s just because my face was so fucked up. They couldn’t shoot my face anymore.”
Once The Substance concluded shooting, Qualley’s face had yet to recover. However, this conveniently played to her advantage when she played four different characters in the Yorgos Lanthimos movie Kinds of Kindness.
She explained: “So, you know the character that has all that acne? That was just my acne from the prosthetics. And I was like, ‘Oh this is kind of perfect. I’m playing all these different characters. For one of them, we’ll use all my crazy prosthetic acne.’ It took me probably a year to recover physically from all of it.”
In a four-star review of The Substance, Far Out wrote: “The whole film is like the final straw before a person spirals into a total meltdown, with the craft of the movie expertly designed to push audiences there along with its characters.”
At the Golden Globes earlier this month, Moore was awarded with ‘Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy Or Musical’. In her speech, she told those in attendance: “I really wasn’t expecting that. I’m just in shock right now! I’ve been doing this a long (time), like over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor. And I’m just so humbled and so grateful.”
The Substance is nominated in five categories at the Baftas next month in London. Fargeat is shortlisted for ‘Best Director’, Moore is up for ‘Leading Actress’, and the film also received nods for awards, including ‘Original Screenplay’.
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