In a recent interview on the Reign with Josh Smith podcast, Florence Pugh shared that she is unlikely to take on a role like her character Dani in ‘Midsommar’ again.
Pugh explained that over the years, she has learned how to protect herself as an actor, and part of that involves recognizing when not to repeat a particularly intense role.
“There have been some roles where I’ve given too much and I’ve been broken for a long while afterwards,” Pugh shared. “Like when I did ‘Midsommar,’ I definitely felt like I abused myself in the places that I got myself to go.”
“The nature of figuring these things out is you need to go, ‘Alright, well, I can’t do that again because 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.”
Pugh has praised director Ari Aster, telling The New York Times last year that he is “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 told Off Menu podcast last year similar things. She said 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.”
Directed by Ari Aster, ‘Midsommar’ tells the story of a group of friends who travel to Sweden for a festival held every 90 years and find themselves in the grip of a Scandinavian pagan cult.
