The Substance Interview: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley & Coralie Fargeat

Writer-director Coralie Fargeat taps into something primal with her body horror movie, The Substance. "I want to let this violence go out and hopefully make a change," she told Perri Nemiroff while at the Toronto International Film Festival for her movie's North American premiere. Violence and beauty may not go hand-in-hand with a large part of society, but for people who identify as women and those who feel the weight of beauty standards, the two can often be synonymous when it comes to appearance and self-image. After all, beauty is pain, right?

In The Substance, Demi Moore, a Hollywood icon as both an actress and a standard of beauty herself, plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an A-list celebrity who's peaked. Age has rendered her useless to studio head Harvey (Dennis Quaid), but a mysterious drug offers Elisabeth a second chance. It's a simple injection that allows her to live in a fresh, new, younger body -- sort of. Sue, played by Margaret Qualley, is the cloned product of the drug and an ambitious and physically stunning 20-year-old. These two personalities must share their bodies, one week at a time, or risk biological consequences, but the desire for autonomy is dangerously strong.

Fargeat, Moore, and Qualley all stopped by Collider's interview studio at the Cinema Center at MARBL to dissect and crack into their body horror feature. How did Fargeat land on this bloody and beautiful approach to the message she wanted to share? The auteur discusses wanting to purge her own self-doubts, and Moore and Qualley share how they discovered their characters through little dialogue and a lot of prosthetics, "tears, and snot." The trio explain their own struggles with these themes, as well as lessons learned throughout production and tons more.

#demimoore #interview #thesubstance #margaretqualley #actor

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