{"id":286505,"date":"2025-11-12T02:53:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T02:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/286505\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T02:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T02:53:10","slug":"florence-pugh-says-midsommar-abuse-caused-depression-for-six-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/286505\/","title":{"rendered":"Florence Pugh Says ‘Midsommar’ Abuse Caused Depression for Six Months"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFlorence Pugh<\/a> has been honest in previous interviews<\/a> about not planning to do roles like \u201cMidsommar<\/a>\u201d again because she abused her mental health in order to play the character (in this case it was Dani, a grief-stricken American woman who has a psychological breakdown when she joins her toxic boyfriend on a trip). Now in a new interview on \u201cThe Louis Theroux Podcast,\u201d<\/a> the Oscar nominee reveals the emotional exhaustion of filming \u201cMidsommar\u201d led to six months of depression.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just can\u2019t exhaust myself like that because it has a knock-on effect,\u201d Pugh said. \u201cI think [\u2018Midsommar\u2019] made me sad for like six months after and I didn\u2019t know why I was depressed. I got back after shooting\u00a0\u2018Little Women,\u2019 which was such a fun experience and obviously a completely different tone from \u2018Midsommar,\u2019 so I think shelved all of that. And then when I got home for Christmas, I was so depressed and I was like, \u2018Oh, I think that\u2019s from \u201cMidsommar,\u201d\u2018 and I didn\u2019t deal with it and I probably shouldn\u2019t do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMidsommar\u201d was \u201cHereditary\u201d filmmaker Ari Aster\u2019s second feature directorial effort. The movie required Pugh to play a character \u201cin such a horrible state in her life,\u201d the actor explained, and Pugh responded by diving head first into Dani\u2019s emotional breakdown.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had never seen that level of grief or mental health in the way that was being asked of me on the page,\u201d Pugh said on the podcast. \u201cSo for that, I really put myself through it. At 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, \u2018Oh no, I actually needed to imagine the coffins.\u2019 And then towards the end of the shoot, I actually was going to my whole family\u2019s funeral.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just crying. I needed to sound pained,\u201d Pugh continued. \u201cI\u2019d never done anything like that before and I was like, \u2018OK, well here\u2019s my opportunity. I need to give this a go.\u2019 And I would just basically put myself through hell. But I don\u2019t do that anymore. It really fucked me up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter \u201cMidsommar\u201d wrapped, Pugh traveled immediately to the Boston set of Greta Gerwig\u2019s \u201cLittle Women.\u201d The Oscar nominee was overcome with emotion during the switch between movies and even broke down in tears on the flight to \u201cLittle Women\u2019s\u201d Boston set when it dawned on her that she was leaving Dani in the past.<\/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, but I also then felt sorry for what I\u2019d done,\u201d Pugh said. \u201cIt was very, very strange and I\u2019ve never ever been worried about my characters from the day that I finish. But [Dani] was the one that I felt like I\u2019d left her in that field with the film crew just filming her cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAny abuse that Pugh suffered during the making of \u201cMidsommar\u201d was strictly self-inflicted and had nothing to do with Aster. She\u2019s always had nothing but praise for the director, once telling\u00a0The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0last year that he\u2019s \u201cpeculiar in a mad genius kind of a way\u201d and \u201ca stand-up comedian at heart.\u201d She added, \u201cOnce you laugh at one thing, he will try and make you laugh at all the other things. He\u2019ll keep going and everybody will be crying in fits of laughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Louis Theroux Podcast\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>is available on Spotify now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florence Pugh has been honest in previous interviews about not planning to do roles like \u201cMidsommar\u201d again because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,138164,139572],"class_list":["post-286505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-florence-pugh","tag-midsommar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}