Margaret Qualley says her Substance prosthetics screwed up her face for a year
"They couldn’t shoot my face anymore," Qualley said, noting that some of the movie's shots were deliberately composed to avoid her prosthetics acne.
Screenshot: YouTube
There are many moments, in Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 horror-satire The Substance, when Fargeat’s frequently invasive camera is clearly avoiding its characters’ faces on purpose. That’s mostly just part of the movie’s whole ethos, with the camera frequently breaking the human body down into individual components in order to highlight how much sheer objectification is being hurled at its characters on a day-to-day basis. But sometimes, as it turns out, it’s because star Margaret Qualley’s face was just too damaged by the movie’s prosthetics in order to proceed with a more “normal” shot.