Demi Moore Opens Up About High 'Intensity' of Filming The substancehis new body horror film directed by Coralie Fargeat.
THE Feud The star, who plays Elisabeth in the upcoming film, revealed in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times that she was diagnosed with shingles during a week-long break from filming.
“To give you an idea of the intensity, my first week off, with only Margaret working, I got shingles,” Moore said. “And then I lost, like, 20 pounds.”
Shingles is a “painful rash-like disease” that can be contracted when “the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), which causes chickenpox, is reactivated in the body after you have already had chickenpox,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Her co-star, Margaret Qualley, who plays Sue, also faced her own challenges during production, given the weight of the film. “Oh yeah, I had crazy acne for quite a while,” she added.
However, both stars knew that Fargeat would push them to new heights with their roles in The substance and each of them fully embraced it.
“You have to leave feeling like you’ve put everything on the table,” Moore explained. “It was called for and that’s what you want to bring.”
The film is the sequel to the director's 2017 debut film Vendettafollows a fading celebrity who decides to use a black market drug, a substance that can replicate cells and temporarily create a younger, better version of herself.
“It’s really what she’s doing to herself that’s most violent,” Moore said. The substancewhich will be released in theaters on September 20th.[The script] He's taken something that is a very internalized violence against oneself and externalized it in this way that allows the audience to have some objectivity and really see what we're doing to ourselves through that harsh, constant criticism and comparison.”
Fargeat added: “I recently read a tagline in an article about the film that said, 'Being a woman is body horror.' The film can be scary on many levels, but the first is about playing with the violence of what we do to our bodies.”