During an interview with the Off Menu podcast, Florence Pugh discussed her role as Dani in the psychological horror film Midsommar, directed by Ari Aster.
Pugh’s character in the movie is going through a difficult period due to the s**cide of her sister and her parents. To fully immerse herself in the role, Pugh revealed that she had to take extreme measures and do violence to herself.
Pugh admitted that she had never played a character like Dani in her previous films and had to imagine the most terrible things to get into character.
She stated that daily became more strange and complex, and her head was filled with atrocious thoughts. To get the most out of her performance, Pugh consciously decided to drop herself methodically into the character and did violence to herself.
“Each day the content would be getting more weird and harder to do,” she shared. “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.”
However, Pugh emphasized that it was her choice to take such extreme measures to bring the character to life. She explained that she was so immersed in the feeling that she had to go to great lengths to understand the character’s mindset and experiences. Pugh’s dedication to her craft is evident in her outstanding performance in the film.
