The Substance star explains how the extensive prosthetics damaged her face. The 2024 hit body horror film tackles the issue of aging in Hollywood in a unique way, telling a tale of the lengths an aging star named Elisabeth Sparkle will go to in order to preserve a sense of youth. The older star is played by Demi Moore, who is opposite Maid‘s Margaret Qualley. The Substance received great reviews and earned Moore a Golden Globe for Best Female Actor for Best Musical or Comedy.

Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Qualley details the effects of the extensive prosthetics that were used for her in The Substance. Qualley explains that the prosthetics she had to use in The Substance made her face break out with extensive acne. This influenced The Substance filming, as the team had to cut around her face in scenes filmed after the prosthetic-heavy scenes. The effect was so great that it even persisted during Qualley’s next shoot, Kinds of Kindness. Check out the full quote from Qualley below:

By the end of this shoot, I had like. Wait, did you see, you saw Kinds of Kindness? Okay, so, you know the character that has all that acne? That was just my acne from the prosthetics, and I was like, oh this is kind of perfect, I’m playing all these different charatcers, for one of them we’ll use all my crazy prosthetic acne. Yeah, like it took me probably like a year to recover like physically from all of it.

Like at the end, when they’re shooting up my skirt in the beginning credits, and it is like the palm trees all around, and they have all these long lens from the bottom, that’s just because my face was so ҒUCҜed up by that time that they couldn’t like shoot my face anymore.

What These Prosthetics Meant For The Substance

The Makeup Created The Beast, Elisasue

Even though it had an immense effect on Qualley, The Substance‘s prosthetics were critical to the movie. This makeup tactic is employed when the film’s Elisabeth and Sue merge together into one, monstrous, Elisasue. As a body-horror film, this being with a melted-looking face and extra breasts protruding from her body is a critical image. Her level of prosthetics is definitely extensive, however, so it makes sense why Qualley’s skin may have struggled to recover.

The extensive prosthetics have paid off, as The Substance has been recognized for its stellar makeup work at multiple awards shows. The next major award it will be in contention for is the annual Academy Awards, whose nominations will now be announced on January 23, provided that there are not more delays due to the Los Angeles fires. While The Substance faces some formidable compeтιтion with the likes of Nosferatu and A Different Man, it is clear from stories like Qualley’s that the movie put a lot of effort into its effects.

Our Take On The Substance’s Hair And Makeup

The Substance’s Practical Effects Are Winners

While the lengths that The Substance team took to achieve its effects are both extreme and amusing, they are a testament to the amount of effort that went into the practical effects in this film. Like many modern horror films, there were definitely uses of CGI within the movie, but some of The Substance‘s most shocking moments are achieved through practical effects. This is rare and refreshing in a world inundated with CGI effects.

Source: Happy Sad Confused Podcast