Yahoo Lifestyle “They Couldn't Shoot My Face”: Margaret Qualley Said Her Prosthetics For “The Substance” Gave Her Such Bad Acne That It Took A Year For Her To “Physically” Recover
By now, you’ll have definitely heard about The Substance — one of the most talked-about movies of the year.
It’s the critically acclaimed body horror thriller starring Demi Moore as an aging Hollywood star who takes a black-market drug called the Substance, which spawns a younger, “better” version of herself called Sue, played by Margaret Qualley.
MUBI / Courtesy Everett Collection
Demi just won a well-deserved Golden Globe for her performance as Elisabeth Sparkle — and looks likely to score an Oscar nomination, too.
The Substance cleverly examines themes of toxic beauty standards, and even if you’ve not seen it yet, you’ll probably have heard that there are a ton of very graphic scenes involving blood, nudity, and body disfigurement.
Impressively, the film relies primarily on practical effects rather than CGI. However, this did mean that both Demi and Margaret spent a lot of time in the makeup chair while shooting was underway.
Around the time of the film’s release in September, Demi told Entertainment Weekly about the grueling process, revealing some shoot days began with over nine hours of prosthetics work — with up to 14 pieces “glued” to just her face alone.
MUBI / YouTube / Via youtu.be
In the same interview, she also talked about the risk of damage to her skin, particularly during the hour-and-a-half removal process, saying: “You have to be as careful if not more careful taking it off so you don't destroy your skin.”
And now, Margaret has opened up about her prosthetics experience and the long-term impact it had on her skin.
Speaking to Josh Horowitz on the latest episode of his Happy Sad Confused podcast, Margaret revealed that her face had to be cropped out of certain shots that were filmed toward the end of the shoot because, by that time, she’d developed such bad “acne from the prosthetics.”
MUBI / YouTube / Via youtu.be
“When they’re shooting up my skirt in the beginning credits when 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 by that time that they couldn’t shoot my face anymore,” she said, letting out a laugh.
Margaret joked that it was kind of ironic that she was “covered” with acne, being that her character is meant to be the embodiment of societal feminine perfection.
Noting that it took “a year to recover, physically,” Margaret said her skin problems lingered while she was shooting her next movie, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness. But because she was playing four different characters in the film, she said the acne was “kind of perfect.”
“So, you know the character that has all that acne? That was just my acne from the prosthetics,” she recalled of Kinds of Kindness, which came out a few months before The Substance. “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.’”
You can watch Margaret’s full appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast here.
Demi Moore And Margaret Qualley's New Movie "The Substance" Is Being Called "A New Instant Sicko Classic"Joseph Longo · Sept. 23, 2024
"It Bugs The S*** Out Of Me": Demi Moore Talked About Her "The Substance" Nude SceneLarry Fitzmaurice · Nov. 16, 2024
Demi Moore Opened Up About The “Vulnerability And Rawness” Of Shooting Full-Frontal Nudity With Margaret Qualley For Their Forthcoming Horror Movie, “The Substance”Ellen Durney · May 20, 2024
