Florence Pugh said during a recent interview on the “Reign with Josh Smith” podcast (via People) that she is not likely to do a role like “Midsommar” again because she feels like she abused herself while playing the film’s protagonist Dani, a grief-stricken American woman who has a psychological breakdown when she joins her toxic boyfriend on a trip to Sweden’s midsummer festival. Pugh said she’s “learned how to” protect herself as an actor over the years, and part of that is knowing when you just can’t do a role again.
“There have been some roles where I’ve given too much and I’ve been broken for a long while afterwards,” Pugh said. “Like when I did ‘Midsommar,’ I definitely felt like I abused myself in the places that I got myself to go.”
“I mean, the nature of figuring these things out is you need to go, ‘Alright, well, I can’t do that again ’cause that was too much,’” she continued. “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.”
Any abuse that Pugh suffered during the making of “Midsommar” was strictly self-inflicted. She has nothing but praise for director Ari Aster and told 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.”
“We were shooting in a very hot field with three different languages, so I wouldn’t say that all of it was pleasurable,” Pugh continued about making the movie. “Also, it shouldn’t be. Why would making a movie like that be pleasurable?”
Pugh said during an interview on the “Off Menu” podcast last year that she had “never played someone that was in that much pain” until Dani in “Midsommar,” adding: “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.”
Pugh continued, “Each day the content would be getting more weird and harder to do. 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.”
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.
“I remember looking [out the plane] and feeling immense guilt because I felt like I’d left [Dani] in that field in that [emotional] state,” Pugh said. “It’s so weird. I’ve never had that before…Obviously, that’s probably a psychological thing where I felt immense guilt of what I’d put myself through but I definitely felt like I’d left her there in that field to be abused…almost like I’d created this person and then I just left her there to go and do another movie.”
Head over to the “Reign with Josh Smith” podcast to listen to Pugh’s latest interview in its entirety.
