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 facial prosthetics used in “The Substance.” The damage was so bad that director Coralie Farget had to contour her face in certain shots.
“In the end, when they shoot my skirt at the beginning, and it’s like palm trees everywhere and they have all these long lenses at the bottom, it’s just because my face was so bad,” Qualley said. . “They can’t shoot me in the face anymore.”
Her prosthetic acne persisted long after The Substance wrapped and continued until she began filming her next film, Kinds of Kindness, in which she played four characters: Vivian, Martha, Rebecca, and Ruth. Fortunately, young love played to her advantage in Yorgos Lanthimos’ drama.
“So, you know the character who had all this acne? That was just prosthetic acne,” Qualley said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s kind of perfect.’” I play all these different characters. For one of them, we’ll be using all my crazy artificial acne. It probably took me a year to physically recover from all of that.
“The Substance” emerged as a surprise contender during this year’s awards season, considering that horror typically doesn’t fare well among voters. Demi Moore won her first Golden Globe this year for her leading role in The Substance, which tells the story of an aging TV star who uses a mysterious miracle drug to create a younger, more marketable version of herself.