The Substance director shares the most unexpected studio note she got for the film

Coralie Fargeat's The Substance is up for five Oscar nominations but it wasn't an easy feat for the director. A lot of doubt was involved, given the gore in it, but people praised it. Now that she is becoming an international sensation, she shared a few details about the film in a recent interview, especially about the shrimp scene.

The film was released on September 20, 2024, in the US after a Cannes Film Festival premiere and stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, and more in it. It became a commercial success, garnering $77 million against an $18 million budget.

That shrimp scene in The Substance bothered people a lot

The director recently appeared on Variety's Awards Circuit Podcast, where she revealed that the studio tried to push back the shrimp scene from the film. She said,

"From all the things in the movie that I thought could bother people, the one that I could have never imagined was the shrimp. It came only from guys, I might say. Like, ‘Come on, calm down with the shrimp.’ And I think it made them uncomfortable because it was portrayed in a way that felt over the top."

Here she was talking about the same scene where Harvey (Dennis Quaid) chomps those crunchy shrimps and gulps them down the throat while abruptly dismissing Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) from an aerobics TV show she used to host. This is where the tensions rise, as Moore's character now needs to save her career anyhow.

Now, that is one interesting scene, but here's what's more interesting: Dennis Quaid reportedly gulped down a couple of kilograms of shrimp for that scene. Even Demi Moore commented on that, calling The Substance's scene "disgusting," but of course, with a laugh.

She did that twice. While appearing on the American talk show Late Night with Seth Meyers, as a joke, she called this scene the most violent one in the film.

But this scene was indeed a different kind of craft, and sound played a major role in it. One of the sound designers of The Substance, Valerie Deloof, shared that they wanted to make the character more obscene. She told A Sound Effect,

"We created many layers of sound that complement each other to mark the cracking of the shell and the juiciness of the shrimp, as well as its transformation in his mouth."

And they removed the background sounds to put more emphasis on the shrimp, now that's marvelously disgusting.

The Substance is currently sitting fresh with 89% approval on Tomatometer.