Hollywood star Margaret Qualley has revealed that the prosthetics she wore in the critically acclaimed horror film "The Substance" caused so much damage to her skin that it took her about a year to recover.
"My face was so dirty at the time," Qualley told Josh Horowitz on the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast.
"They couldn't get any more shots of my face at the end of the movie," she said in the episode released Monday.
Qualley added that the dentures caused acne which lasted even when she was filming her next film "Kinds of Kindness."
"You know the character who has all those pimples? Those were just my pimples from the dentures," Qualley said.
“And I said, ‘Oh, this is actually kind of perfect. I’m playing all these different characters [in ‘Kinds of Kindness’]. For one of them, we’re going to use all my crazy acne.’ Yeah, it took me probably a year to physically recover from all that.”
Making extensive use of prosthetics and other practical effects, "The Substance" tells the story of popular actress and fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore, who is fired from her job by her boss on her 50th birthday. She learns about a black market drug known as Substance, which promises her a younger version of herself named Sue, played by Qualley, with a few caveats.
The film delves into the body horror genre, as Sue emerges gruesomely from a crack in Elisabeth's spine and, as their relationship becomes increasingly destructive, both of their bodies break down in a parable about the pitfalls of the pursuit of eternal youth.
Without giving away too many revealing details, everything culminates in a final act that gives new meaning to the term "bloodbath."
At the end of the film, Qualley donned a prosthetic suit that she described as "a torture chamber" to the LA Times.
"We would keep doing this until I had a panic attack," she said. "And the tempting thing is you want to take the prosthesis off, but of course you can't do that because it would take your skin with it."
The prosthetics can last "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 them all off."
The film, which is the second feature film by French writer and director Coralie Fargeat, was considered a critical success. Moore and Qualley's performances in particular are garnering numerous awards, with Moore winning a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Source: CNN
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