Florence Pugh has been open in previous interviews about the toll that playing emotionally intense roles can take on her mental health. Reflecting on her experience with the film *Midsommar*, she has admitted that immersing herself so deeply in the character came at a heavy personal cost.
In a recent interview on *The Louis Theroux Podcast*, the Oscar nominee revealed that filming *Midsommar* led to six months of depression. “I just can’t exhaust myself like that because it has a knock-on effect,” Pugh shared. “I think *Midsommar* made me sad for like six months after and I didn’t know why I was depressed. I got back after shooting *Little Women*, which was such a fun experience and obviously a completely different tone from *Midsommar*, so I think I shelved all of that. And then when I got home for Christmas, I was so depressed and I was like, ‘Oh, I think that’s from *Midsommar*,’ and I didn’t deal with it and I probably shouldn’t do that again.”
*Midsommar*, directed by Ari Aster, who also helmed *Hereditary*, was Aster’s second feature film. The movie required Pugh to portray Dani—a grief-stricken American woman experiencing a psychological breakdown during a toxic trip with her boyfriend. Pugh explained on the podcast how deeply she invested herself emotionally to bring Dani’s trauma to life.
“I had never seen that level of grief or mental health in the way that was being asked of me on the page,” Pugh said. “So for that, I really put myself through it. At the beginning, I just imagined hearing the news that one of my siblings had died, and then towards the middle of the shoot, it was like, oh no, I actually needed to imagine the coffins. And then towards the end of the shoot, I actually was going to my whole family’s funeral.”
She added, “It wasn’t just crying. I needed to sound pained. I’d never done anything like that before and I was like, okay, well here’s my opportunity. I need to give this a go. And I would just basically put myself through hell. But I don’t do that anymore. It really fucked me up.”
Immediately after wrapping *Midsommar*, Pugh traveled to the Boston set of Greta Gerwig’s *Little Women*. The transition was emotionally overwhelming. She broke down in tears on the flight, realizing she was leaving Dani behind.
“My brain was obviously feeling sympathy for myself because I’d abused myself and really manipulated my own emotions to get a performance,” Pugh said. “But I also then felt sorry for what I’d done. It was very, very strange and I’ve never ever been worried about my characters from the day that I finish. But [Dani] was the one that I felt like I’d left her in that field with the film crew just filming her cry.”
Importantly, any emotional distress Pugh experienced during the making of *Midsommar* was self-inflicted and unrelated to Aster’s directing. She has consistently praised him, once telling *The New York Times* that he’s “peculiar in a mad genius kind of a way” and “a stand-up comedian at heart.”
“Once you laugh at one thing, he will try and make you laugh at all the other things,” she said. “He’ll keep going and everybody will be crying in fits of laughter.”
Florence Pugh’s candid reflections highlight the emotional risks actors sometimes take to deliver authentic performances—and the importance of caring for one’s mental health throughout the creative process.
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/florence-pugh-midsommar-abuse-depression-six-months-1236574037/
