She said she got the “painful rash illness” during a break from filming the new movie
Demi Moore reveals that there was a high “intensity” filming her new film The Substance — especially since she had to deal with a health diagnosis amid production.
The Feud actress, 61, shared in a recent interview with the L.A. Times that she got shingles on a break from filming The Substance, which she stars in with Margaret Qualley.
“To give you an idea of the intensity, my first week that I actually had off, where it was just Margaret working, I got shingles,” Moore recalled to the outlet.
“And I then lost, like, 20 pounds,” she added.
Margaret Qualley and Demi Moore attend the “The Substance” Red Carpet at the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival.
Lionel Hahn/Getty Images
Shingles is a “painful rash illness” that people can get when the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), which causes chickenpox, “reactivates in their bodies”, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC said when people get shingles, they can develop a “painful, itchy, or tingly” rash around the “left or right side of the body,” and the risk of shingles increases as a person gets older.
Her co-star Qualley also noted in the interview that she faced her own set of challenges while making the film, including “crazy acne” that she dealt with “for a full, long-a– time.”
Director Coralie Fargeat also shared in the interview that she wanted to highlight the difficulties of dealing with one’s own body and the changes that come with it.
“I read a tagline in an article about the film recently that said, ‘Being a woman is body horror,’” Fargeat shared. “The movie can be scary on many levels, but the first is about playing with the violence of what we do to our bodies.”
The Substance reflects these themes. In the film, Moore plays Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle, who uses an experimental drug advertised to create a younger version of herself — ultimately, her clone Sue, played by Qualley.
The official synopsis for the horror film teases how the fictional drug works: “It generates another you. A new, younger, more beautiful, more perfect, you. And there’s only one rule: You share time. One week for you. One week for the new you. Seven days each. A perfect balance. Easy. Right? If you respect the balance… what could possibly go wrong?”
While chatting with Interview magazine, Moore previously said she was “moved” when she read the movie’s script “because it was such a unique way to be exploring this issue of aging, of societal conditioning, of what I also see as the pressure of the male-idealized woman that we as women have bought into.”
She continued to explain that the movie explores the themes in a more personal manner. “At the core of it, what it’s really about is what we do to ourselves, and I loved that it was illustrated in such a physical way—showing that violence with what we do with our thoughts, how we attack ourselves and distort things,” she said.
