Margaret Qualley says her skin took a year to recover from ‘The Substance’ prosthetics
By Issy Ronald, CNN
(CNN) — Hollywood star Margaret Qualley has revealed that the prosthetics she wore in the critically-acclaimed horror movie “The Substance” caused so much damage to her skin that it took about a year to recover.
“At the end, when they’re shooting up my skirt in the beginning credits, when 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 by that time,” Qualley told Josh Horowitz on the podcast “Happy Sad Confused.”
“They couldn’t shoot my face anymore,” she said in the episode, released Monday.
Qualley added that the prosthetics caused acne which lasted even as she was shooting her next movie “Kinds of Kindness.”
“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 actually kind of perfect. I’m playing all these different characters. For one of them, we’ll use all my crazy prosthetic acne.’ Yeah, it took me probably a year to recover physically from all of it.”
By making extensive use of prosthetics and other practical effects, “The Substance” depicts the story of celebrated actress and fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore, who is fired by her boss on her 50th birthday. She learns of a black market drug known as the Substance, which promises to deliver her a younger version of herself named Sue, played by Qualley, with certain caveats.
The movie falls into the body-horror genre so Sue gruesomely emerges out of a slit in Elisabeth’s spine and, as their relationship becomes more and more destructive, both their bodies decay in a parable about the pitfalls of chasing eternal youth.
Without giving too much away, it all culminates in a final act that brings new meaning to the term “bloodbath.”
Towards the end of the movie, Qualley donned a prosthetic suit that she described as “a torture chamber” to the LA Times.
“We would just go until I had a panic attack,” she said. “And the tempting thing is you want to peel it off, but of course you can’t do that, because you’ll bring your skin with you.”
The prosthetics could take “anywhere from six to nine and a half hours,” Moore told Access Hollywood at the Golden Globe Awards. She added that it took “at least an hour and a half to get it all off.”
The movie, which is the second feature from French writer-director Coralie Fargeat, has become a critical and commercial success, and entered the cultural zeitgeist. Moore and Qualley’s performances in particular are receiving much awards buzz, with Moore picking up a Golden Globe for best performance by a female actor in a musical or comedy motion picture.
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