Margaret Qualley reveals her pores and skin took an entire 12 months to recuperate from the prosthetics utilized in The Substance

Margaret Qualley has revealed that she suffered from lasting side effects following her extensive use of prosthetics in body horror film The Substance.

The film has been a hit with audiences and critics alike, with the movie racking up several nominations during this current award season.

However, it turns out there was a price to pay for Andie MacDowell’s daughter, 30, as she opened up about the impact filming took on her skin.

She has recalled the issues she faced while working on her next film, Kinds of Kindness, where she had to play a number of different characters.

The Maid star explained to Happy Sad Confused podcast host Josh Horowitz: ‘You know the character that has, like, all the acne, that was just my acne from the prosthetics.

‘And I was like, “Oh, this is actually kinda perfect. Like, I’m playing all these different characters. For one of them, we’ll really use all my crazy prosthetic acne.”‘

Margaret Qualley has revealed that she suffered from lasting side effects following her extensive use of prosthetics in body horror film, The Substance

It turns out there was a slight price to pay for Andie MacDowell’s daughter, 30, as she opened up about the impact filming took on her skin

Reflecting on how long it took for her skin to return to normal, she continued: ‘It took me probably a year to recover physically from all of it. 

‘When they’re shooting up my skirt at the end, or in the beginning credits, when it’s the palm trees all around, and they have all these long lenses from the bottom, that’s just because my face was so f**ked up by that time that they couldn’t shoot my face anymore.’

The gory body horror flick, which also stars Demi Moore and Dennis Quaid, has been a trending topic thanks to the grotesque looks featured in the film. 

Demi plays Elizabeth Sparkle, a star whose career is on the decline because of her advancing age.

Elizabeth finds out about a fluid called The Substance, which she can inject to create a younger version of herself who can act in her place. 

Sue, played by Margaret, emerges as the new youthful version of Elizabeth, who has to move her mind back and forth between the young and old bodies every week.

However, the process of keeping the Sue body in operation has some very dark side effects.

Margaret previously shared some of the struggles she faced with the prosthetic body suit as she stated: ‘I was in there, with [Demi’s] face plastered onto my own body…. I was alone in that thing. I was running into things. It was a torture chamber.

Reflecting on how long it took for her skin to clear up from acne breakouts, she explained: ‘It took me probably, like, a year to recover physically from all of it’

The gory body horror flick also stars Demi Moore, who has previously spoken about how tasking it was to film with the prosthetics

The Substance tells the story of a star whose career is on the decline because of her advancing age. She starts using The Substance to create a younger version of herself

‘The amount of videos I have of me like, “I can’t do this anymore.” It was eight days. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot. We would just go until I had a panic attack.’

She continued: ‘And the tempting thing is you want to peel it off, but of course you can’t do that, because you’ll bring your skin with you.’

Demi had also commented on how careful she needed to be when removing her own prosthetics during filming in Paris back in 2022. 

‘It was always an hour and a half to get off. Two hours, roughly,’ she explained. ‘It’s glued. You have to be as careful if not more careful taking it off so you don’t destroy your skin.’

Since opening in theaters last month, The Substance has earned over $41 million at the global box office, more than double its budget of $17.5 million.

It was greeted by a similarly glowing response from the critics, to the point it now enjoys a sterling 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Thankfully, the actresses didn’t suffer in vain as Demi won the Golden Globes for the Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for her role.

The movie is also predicted to pull in a number of nominations for the Oscars.