Actress Haley Lu Richardson has revealed she turned down the opportunity to audition for Ari Aster’s celebrated horror movie Midsommar, a part that Florence Pugh ultimately landed. Richardson told Backstage that Midsommar is one of the roles “that got away.”
The White Lotus Season 2 star said she received the script and the studio wanted to meet her, potentially because she had starred in another eerie movie, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, a couple years earlier. The script for Midsommar was well-written and creepy, Richardson said, but she didn’t want to make another “disturbing” movie right away after Split.
“I was like, ‘I don’t want to do another disturbing movie right now. I just don’t have it in me, going around and crying at these disturbing things.’ It wasn’t something that I wanted, and I felt really strongly about that. So I didn’t even take the meeting.”
Now that some time has passed, Richardson said Midsommar is an “iconic” film. But she isn’t losing sleep over it. “I do think that everything happens the way that it’s supposed to. There was a reason I didn’t have it in me.”
Richardson also remarked that the person who got the role in the end, Pugh, is “such a good actor.” Richardson also explained that she still hasn’t seen Midsommar. “I kind of can’t bring myself to watch it,” she said.
After Midsommar, Aster made the surreal thriller Beau Is Afraid, which is in theaters now.
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