Yahoo Lifestyle Margaret Qualley says “The Substance ”prosthetics 'f---ed up' her face so much, it took her skin a year to recover
"They couldn't, like, shoot my face anymore."
Jesse Grant/Variety via Getty
Margaret Qualley in October 2024Margaret Qualley's movie The Substance is having a moment, but for her, the repercussions lasted much longer. The skin on her face suffered the consequences of having regularly worn extensive prosthetics while shooting the awards darling, and it even impacted her next film, Kinds of Kindness, in which she played multiple characters.
"You know the character that has, like, all the acne, like, that was just my acne from the prosthetics," she revealed on a recent edition of the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "And I was like, 'Oh, this is actually kinda perfect. Like, I'm playing all these different characters. For one of them, we'll really use all my crazy prosthetic acne.'"
The effects went on and on.
"It took me probably, like, a year to recover physically from all of it. When they're shooting up my skirt at the end, or in the beginning credits, when it's, like, the palm trees all around, and they have, like, all these long lenses from the bottom. That's just because my face was so f---ed up by that time that they couldn't, like, shoot my face anymore."
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The film, which costars Demi Moore and Dennis Quaid, required many changing looks. It's about a one-time respected actress, Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore), who is fired from her longtime aerobics video job because of her age. She decides to take injectables that revive her youthful looks but come with dark side effects.
In September, Moore told EW that she sat for more than nine hours of prosthetic work each day during filming.
"It was always an hour and a half to get off. Two hours, roughly," she said of her routine during the film's Paris shoot over about six months in 2022.
Moore said that she would have 14 pieces on just her face.
"It's glued," she said. "You have to be as careful if not more careful taking it off so you don't destroy your skin."
MUBI/Courtesy Everett
Margaret Qualley stars in 'The Substance'At least the dedication has paid off for the cast and crew. The movie had already cleaned up at places like the Cannes Film Festival, and Moore scooped up the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy at this month's ceremony.
Qualley had been nominated in the same category.
When EW asked Qualley if anything in the film has pushed her to the brink, physically or emotionally, she said, "All of it. Every goddamned day. Even the dancing [in the workout video portions] was brutal."
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