Florence Pugh shot to fame with her breakout role in the 2019 horror movie Midsommar, playing an American college student who travels to Sweden for a festival and ends up being initiated into a creepy, murderous commune. The experience definitely left a mark on the 27-year-old actor, which she reflected on in a new interview, saying she "definitely abused" herself prepping for the role and working through her scenes.
Florence recently appeared on the Off Menu podcast, hosted by Ed Gamble and James Acaster, and shared that she really threw herself a bit too far into playing her character Dani, who is grieving a serious loss and navigating a failing relationship all while encountering inexplicable horrors at the festival.
“When I did it, I was so wrapped up in her and I’ve never had this ever before with any of my characters,” Florence said. "There were so many places that I had to go to. 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, but I would just be imagining the worst things."
Though Florence has said in the past that she “loves playing a distressed woman,” it's clear that Dani's distress had unprecedented effects on her. The horror movie kept Florence on edge, and filming made her feel incredibly vulnerable and emotional.
"Each day the content would be getting more weird and harder to do," she shared. "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."
She also found it hard to let go of Dani after she wrapped her scenes. "I've always thought all my characters, once I left like, 'They’ll be fine,'" Florence explained. “She can't fend for herself... and then I just left her when I had to go do another movie. I created such a sad person, and then felt guilty that I'd created that person and then left her.”
Right after she wrapped filming on Midsommar, Florence Pugh left to start production on Little Women. Though she received wide critical acclaim for her performance in both films, let's hope playing a misunderstood heroine like the empowered, unapologetic Amy March helped Flo heal a bit from Dani's trauma.
You can listen to Florence's full reflection on Midsommar in her interview with Off Menu below:
