As I’ve mentioned in several posts now, I saw The Substance over the holidays and I loathed it. While I thought it was an interesting concept and *some* of the body horror was well-executed, they really drove the whole story off of a f–king cliff for the last hour. It was trying to be high-minded about the toxic messages of worshipping youth and beauty, but they also wanted to exploit youth and beauty too. Anyway, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley did the best they could with the material they were given, and both actresses are getting nominations all over the place. Demi has been campaigning more than Margaret, but Margaret has just introduced a “struggle narrative” to her campaign. Apparently, because of all of the facial prosthetics, she had a severe breakout which affected her for about a year.
In a recent interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Margaret Qualley said it took “a year” for her skin to recover from the irritation caused by the face prosthetics used in “The Substance.” The damage was so bad that director Coralie Fargeat had to frame out her face in certain shots.
“At the end, when they’re shooting up my skirt in the beginning credits, and it’s like the palm trees all around and they have all these long lenses from the bottom, that’s just because my face was so f–ked up,” Qualley said. “They couldn’t shoot my face anymore.”
The acne from the prosthetics lasted long after “The Substance” wrapped and persisted as she began shooting her next film, “Kinds of Kindness,” in which she played four characters: Vivian, Martha, Rebecca and Ruth. Luckily, the acne played to her benefit in the Yorgos Lanthimos drama.
“So, you know the character that has all that acne? That was just my acne from the prosthetics,” Qualley said. “And I was like, ‘Oh this is kind of perfect. I’m playing all these different characters. For one of them, we’ll use all my crazy prosthetic acne.’ It took me probably a year to recover physically from all of it.”
This reminded me of Scarlett Johansson talking about how all of the Marvel actors get rashes from their superhero suits and they basically have dermatologists on stand-by. Honestly, as someone who gets a rash at the drop of a hat, Margaret’s story is its own horror story. She should sue! Seriously, her skin’s reaction to those janky prosthetics affected her work! Does this make you want to vote for her in the supporting category?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
