Demi Moore - 59:17 (42.02%)
Margaret Qualley - 57:36 (40.82%)
Dennis Quaid - 7:51 (5.56%)
Having gone into The Substance with basic knowledge of its plot and awareness of its stars’ separate awards campaigns, I expected to be crying category fraud by the end — and that instinct was justified.
Viewer perception is bound to vary when it comes to such a deeply human tale, but I can back mine up by pointing to an utterly perfect poster by Akiko Stehrenberger which conveys that Elisabeth and Sue are both lead characters, regardless of how often viewers find themselves drawn to one over the other.
In compiling The Substance’s screen time data, I counted Elisabeth, Sue, and Monstro Elisasue as separate characters since they exclusively inhabit their own bodies. Since “character time” includes dummies and doubles, Elisabeth has a nearly 11-minute advantage over Sue, although Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley (who spends 10% of her time as Elisasue) are only separated by 101 seconds as actors.
Viewing Moore as the film’s sole lead is understandable given Elisabeth’s overall screen time advantage and the fact that the entire plot stems from her internal conflict. The story intentionally begins and ends with her, and she is indeed the matrix from which Sue and Elisasue develop.
On the other hand, Sue isn’t merely a passive version of her creator but rather a dynamic deuteragonist who frequently drives the plot. Although she isn’t introduced until right after the 20% mark, she slightly outpaces Elisabeth in terms of screen presence between her birth and Elisabeth’s death at 78%.
As much as the characters don’t “respect the balance,” the script does. Those who don’t feel Elisabeth’s presence in much of said middle chunk may be surprised to learn that Sue only pulls 2.06% ahead of her there. Sue develops plenty of lead-qualifying agency in that time (and in the moments directly preceding Elisasue’s birth), but not at the expense of her creator.
Elisabeth and Sue consistently view each other as supporting characters in their own lives, but an outside viewer should recognize that neither woman’s repression by the other actually makes her supporting. Again, pointing to the familiar old woman/young woman illusion, your eyes might be drawn to one more than the other, but you can’t deny their balanced coexistence.