If you’ve seen Midsommar, you’ll recall the horrific, extensively memed sobbing sequence that occurs near the film’s conclusion. Florence Pugh’s Dani unleashes all her wrath and grief alongside a group of women from the Harga commune in the terrifying clip, which has become one of the defining scenes in Ari Aster’s 2019 folk-horror thriller.

Dani had just witnessed her lover (Jack Reynor) have s-x with another woman from the commune, and it had released all of her bottled-up wrath and anguish. Her feelings are reflected back to her by the other ladies, who scream and cry as well.

Pugh released a behind-the-scenes photo of herself and the other actors hugging each other and sobbing on Instagram this week, and it looks just as intense and sad as the real footage in the film.

Pugh writes, “This was THE scene. The scene which, all who were included knew exactly how many days there were until we shot it.”

The photograph, according to Pugh, caught the moment the first assistant director announced that the sequence was finished.

Pugh admitted, “I’ve never been an actor that finds it easy to cry on camera. It’s something very personal to me and despite finding other aspects of acting exciting and thrilling, I find crying very scary and at some points in my career directors having to change the scene because I couldn’t do it.”

In an emotional homage to the Midsommar sobbing moment, Pugh wrote, “On this film, in this scene, I found a true sisterhood.”

“We all looked at each other before we started rolling and knew it would be hard. And awkward. And strange. And unnatural. We knew it wouldn’t be pleasurable.

“But by the end we were all in each other’s laps and crying and allowing our bodies to keep heaving.”

“I knew I would never be so open and so raw and so exhausted like I was that day ever again, I can hope at least…,” she continued.

“Scenes that make you hurt, or cringe, or turn away from the screen when watching, are scenes that were designed to make you, for ten seconds at least, the most human. But for us, it was hours. Beautiful, hard, proud hours.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Florence Pugh (@florencepugh)

Midsommar is a film set in a secluded Swedish town that follows four American students on a vacation to attend a traditional Scandinavian midsummer celebration, including Dani and Christian, played by Pugh and Jack Reynor. What starts off as a peaceful retreat gradually devolves into pandemonium as they become immersed in a strange and increasingly violent pagan cult.

Midsommar was dubbed “one of the year’s strangest, most distressing, and most memorable films” by critic Clarisse Loughrey in a four-star review for The Independent.

She wrote: “Aster’s MO is to throw convention out of the window. Again, much like his previous film (specifically, Toni Collette’s explosive breakdown at the dinner table), there are traces of morbid humour, but these are tense, uncomfortable laughs – the kind that unintentionally burst out when we’re faced with the incomprehensible…

“It’s a little punishing to audiences, but it’s filled with ideas, images, and feelings that will stay with you long after the credits roll. And it’s worth every second.”

Fighting With My Family and Little Women were the other two films in which Pugh starred in 2019. Together, they helped her have a breakout year (Little Women even earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination). Due to the epidemic, no new Pugh films were released in 2020, but 2021 is slated to be a one-two punch with Black Widow and Don’t Worry Darling, both starring Harry Styles.