‘I was being a sassy Karen’: Florence Pugh campaigned to do dangerous stunt in Thunderbolts
Florence Pugh became a “sassy Karen” as she campaigned to perform a dangerous stunt in ‘Thunderbolts*’.
The 29-year-old actress – who reprises her ‘Black Widow’ role of Yelena Belova in the upcoming Marvel Studios blockbuster – was warned she’d be unable to jump off Malaysia’s Merdeka 118 tower for insurance purposes but she was determined to make it happen.
Speaking to Fandango, she said: “It was in the script, and then slowly as we got closer and closer to shooting, they were like, ‘Yeah, we don’t think it’s gonna happen, it’s just gonna be a crazy insurance ordeal, and obviously we’re not going to throw FP off the second-tallest building in the world.’
“I was like, ‘What the f**k, of course we are. We have to do that!’ “
Florence got in touch directly with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige to plead her case for leaping from the 2,227ft structure.
She continued: “So I was being a sassy Karen just emailing Kevin and being like, ‘Kevin, this is going to do wonders for the press tour, we have to do this!’”
Ultimately, after her “pushing” to do the stunt, producers agreed and said: “OK, if you want to fall off the second-tallest building in the world, we’ll figure that out for you.”
The ‘Midsommar’ actress doesn’t “mind heights” and quite “enjoys them” but being on top of the Merdeka 118 tower was a “whole different ballgame that was insane.
She added: “The mental control I had to do that day was like, that was its own super power.”
While exact plot details about ‘Thunderbolts*’ – which will also star Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Lewis Pullman, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus – are being kept under wraps, the film will follow the team of anti-heroes as they are forced to complete a secret mission for the shady CIA operative Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.
And Sebastian – who will be reprising his role as James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier – recently teased the film has similarities to 1985 classic ‘The Breakfast Club’.
In an interview with ‘Entertainment Tonight’, he shared: “I think this movie is very singular and will stand on its own. I know these are bold words, but there’s no other Marvel group that you can kind of compare us to, it’s its own thing.
“It’s like ‘The Breakfast Club’, that’s the best way of describing it. A pair of misfits that hopefully don’t kill each other.”
Stan’s ‘Thunderbolts*’ sentiment echoes previous comments from his co-star Wyatt.
The actor – who will be playing John Walker, aka US Agent – said the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe project would be far from “straightforward” and insisted director Jake Schreier’s film would be a different kind of superhero movie, due to the team of anti-heroes that features.
He explained to an audience in New York: “It’s not a straightforward Marvel movie as you’ve seen in the past. I think that it’s gonna be a lot of fun but I think it will be something that hopefully Marvel fans will look at and go, ‘Oh OK, this is a little different, let’s go hard at it.'”
