Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley have both received great acclaim for their respective performances in the exceptional new horror film The Substance (all of which they absolutely deserve), but one star of the movie not quite getting the attention they should. You never see him on screen, but actor Yann Bean is the voice that in essence represents the titular procedure, and it’s a case of phenomenal casting in its perfect balance of seductive and sinister. It’s an essential aspect of the work, and writer/director Coralie Fargeat credits him for having an outsized impact.
When I spoke with the filmmaker last month in advance of The Substance’s arrival in theaters, my very first question was about finding the voice of The Substance. She explained that it wasn’t easy to find the right actor for the part, but the casting process unearthed Yann Bean, it took the movie to a new level. Said Fargeat,
I knew that that voice needed to be like the devil's voice, and at the same time, so nice, so tempting and such a gravity of it. So it was a long casting process, and I was lucky to find an actor, American actor who was living in Paris who did the voice for us. And it was such a perfect match. When we listened to his voice and put it in the editing, like, it immediately changed the feeling for the scene.
Featured prominently in the The Substance’s trailers, Yann Bean is the sole representative of those who produce The Substance in the film and provide it to Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle/Margaret Qualley’s Sue. He is both the voice in the promotion of the procedure and is on the other end of the phone when new orders are placed and grievances are made. The voice doesn’t express an agency or explicit will, but it does provide the characters with the tools for their own destruction while simply preaching that they “respect the balance” between them.
Coralie Fargeat explained that she personally provided the voice of The Substance during production, but it truly became its own entity when the film found Yann Bean. She continued,
We were working with temp recording with just me doing the voice while we were shooting. And it finally gave The Substance its identity, which is like something mysterious, powerful, tempting, and dangerous at the same time. It's the devil, basically.
After radical success this past summer at the Cannes Film Festival (winning the coveted Best Screenplay prize) and earning widespread acclaim from critics (I gave it five stars in my CinemaBlend review), The Substance is set to arrive for home viewing just in time for Halloween. The extreme body horror film will be streaming on Mubi starting October 31, and as the best movie of 2024 thus far, it’s a must-see.
