Florence Pugh opens up about self abuse for her role in Midsommar

Florence Pugh is known for her star-making roles in a bunch of recent hits, including Little Women, Don’t Worry Darling, and her latest flick A Good Person. That, she says, is not by accident, due to her extreme dedication to her characters and her roles.

Speaking on the Off Menu podcast recently, hosted by James Acaster and Ed Gamble, Miss Flo revealed that for one of her most iconic role, the 2019 horror movie Midsommar, she went to extremes to get the good takes, and that involved, by her own admission, self abuse.

“When I did it, I was so wrapped up in her and I’ve never had this ever before with any of my characters,” she said. “I’d never played someone that was in that much pain before, and 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.”

“Each day the content would be getting more weird and harder to do,” she continued. “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.”

Of course, the filming location also added to the torture. “We were shooting in a very hot field with three different languages, so I wouldn’t say that all of it was pleasurable,” she added. “Also, it shouldn’t be. Why would making a movie like that be pleasurable?

Anyone who’s seen Midsommar, which follows a young woman as she travels mid-summer to Sweden with her toxic boyfriend who at best emotionally abusive and at worse, cheating on her, knows that the character Dani goes through psychological torture during the story, but in the end, exacts brutal, and somehow satisfying revenge. It was that storyline that stuck with Miss Flo so much that she had a hard time letting it go.

Adding that she flew to Boston directly after Midsommar in order to start filming Little Women with Greta Gerwig, the Oscar nominee says that 180 shift threw her mind for a loop.

“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,” she told the podcast hosts. “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.”

At this point, Miss Flo is known for her extreme lengths to get her characters right. In fact, in her latest movie,  A Good Person, directed by ex-partner Zach Braff, Florence decided to achieve the magnanimity of one intense scene by grabbing scissors and cutting off her own hair while the cameras were rolling. 

"Everyone was really anxious that it was the only take we'd have, but I found it really liberating. If anything, it was like the final key to unlocking this character. It took vanity out the window," she told USA Today.