{"id":128652,"date":"2025-11-12T03:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T03:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/128652\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T03:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T03:41:07","slug":"florence-pugh-says-midsommar-led-to-six-months-of-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/128652\/","title":{"rendered":"Florence Pugh Says \u2018Midsommar\u2019 Led to Six Months of Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFlorence Pugh<\/a>\u2018s portrayal of Dani in Midsommar<\/a> remains one of the most extraordinary depictions of grief ever captured on the silver screen. Yet the emotional toll it took to bring those feelings of despair to life is not something Pugh is willing to endure again. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhen stopping by the The Louis Theroux Podcast, the actress opened up about how \u201chorribly real\u201d the emotions she depicted on-screen were when making the Ari Aster-directed film, leading to six months of depression. In the film, the audience witnesses Dani experience a tragic family trauma involving murder and suicide. \u201cThe character is in such a horrible state in her life and she\u2019s constantly on the brink of a panic attack,\u201d Pugh said in the new interview, explaining that she had \u201cnever, ever been through anything close to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo for that, I\u2019d really put myself through it,\u201d she continued. \u201cAt the beginning, I just imagined hearing the news that one of my siblings had died. And then towards the middle of the shoot, it was like, oh no, I actually needed to imagine the coffins. And then towards the end of the shoot, I actually was going to my whole family\u2019s funeral.\u201d Pugh said that because she had never done anything like that before, she put herself \u201cthrough hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Midsommar finished filming, Pugh headed to Boston to shoot Greta Gerwig\u2019s Little Women, with just three days in between. As she was on the plane and leaving Budapest, where Midsommar was shot, the actress said she began weeping because she felt like she had left Dani to \u201cfigure out how to do the rest of her life.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy brain was obviously feeling sympathy for myself, because I\u2019d abused myself and really manipulated my own emotions to get a performance,\u201d said Pugh. \u201cI just can\u2019t exhaust myself like that because it has a knock-on effect. I think it made me sad for like six months after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the film may have been one of the most mentally arduous projects Pugh has taken on, the actress has praised Aster \u2014 who also wrote and directed Hereditary \u2014 in the past. In a 2023 New York Times interview, Pugh described the director as \u201cpeculiar in the mad genius kind of way.\u201d She recalled, \u201cHe would do therapy sessions with Jack [Reynor, her co-star] and I in our characters. Ari would be our therapist and would be asking us questions. I find that stuff quite hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a Rolling Stone<\/a> review of Midsommar<\/a>, writer Peter Travers deemed Aster \u201ca\u00a0bold new voice in psychological horror, the kind that messes ruthlessly with your head,\u201d and touted Pugh\u2019s performance as working \u201cwonders in showing us a character who grows in confidence and toxic strength as the film progresses toward Dani\u2019s validating vengeance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florence Pugh\u2018s portrayal of Dani in Midsommar remains one of the most extraordinary depictions of grief ever captured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,66509,85,46,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-128652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-florence-pugh","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}