Florence Pugh on Yelena’s Emotional Journey in ‘Thunderbolts*’ and Why Having So Many Stars in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Is ‘Nutso Sauce’

Florence Pugh might have daredevil in her DNA.

At last summer’s San Diego Comic-Con, Pugh revealed that she had a major stunt in “Thunderbolts”: jumping off the second tallest building in the world, Merdeka, a 118-story skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s the type of terrifying feat that would freak most grandparents out, but Pugh’s grandmother, affectionately called “Granzo Pat,” didn’t seem to bat an eyelash during the London premiere of the Marvel movie.

“She loved the movie. She said, ‘Brilliant, darling. Very thrilling,’ but I didn’t ask her what she thought of the jump,” Pugh tells Variety in Los Angeles a few days later. “She’s also crazy, like she’s someone that does some pretty mad stuff, so maybe she just thought that was a walk in the park.”

With the once-in-a-lifetime stunt, Pugh adds “Guinness World Record holder” to her already impressive resume, but she didn’t do it for the personal glory. “I wanted to do that stunt because I knew that it meant that we all got to do it. Like, yes, I got to jump off the second-tallest building in the world, but so did we all,” Pugh says of sharing the record with longtime Marvel stunt coordinator Heidi Moneymaker and base jumper Katie Hansen. “That day in Malaysia was an achievement for all of us. We all got to say that we worked on that stunt, and what an impressive and powerful way to start a movie!”

Indeed, the freefall underscores the idea that “Thunderbolts*,” in theaters now, is a totally different kind of Marvel movie — one that uses its action to alert the audience that Pugh’s kick-ass mercenary Yelena Belova is not really enjoying her job. That’s the early vibe of director Jake Schreier’s superhero team-up movie, which assembles a crew of antiheroes — Black Widow agent Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh); Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan); Russian super soldier — and Yelena’s adopted dad — Red Guardian (David Harbour); the disgraced former “Captain America” John Walker (Wyatt Russell); the invisible spy Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen); and combat expert Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) — to face their darkest sides of themselves.

That beginning makes quite a powerful statement, because this movie is about depression and grappling with shame — things you wouldn’t have expected from a summer blockbuster. What was it like to delve into those themes?

Really, I was just so impressed that Marvel wanted to do this version of the movie. They’ve made some amazing films with amazing stunt sequences, but how cool to be able to say that we’ve made a movie that is about something that we all struggle with.

This movie will help a lot of people. And the underlying message is that we need to be there for each other. We need to open up. We need to connect. Like that, to me is that would be an impressive movie anyway, let alone it being a Marvel movie that thousands of people are gonna go and watch.

You’ve described Yelena as a very raw character, but she’s also very empathetic and very lonely. What was it like getting a chance to take her on this journey where she’s finally finding her team, that family that she’s looking for?

One of the things that I love about her is that she’s always trying to help the person that maybe isn’t as strong, or maybe needs a bit of love. She did that with Kate Bishop [in “Hawkeye”]; she did that with Bob. She saved the hamster — she adopted Fanny Longbottom. Like she’s someone that really understands what it feels like to need help.

Because she was left when she was younger and because she had that open-wounded relationship with her sister, it meant that she’s very sympathetic to people, and even though she’s going through her own trauma in this movie, like that’s still there. She still wants to save the hamster, and she still wants to help Bob, and that’s a really beautiful thing to play. So yes, she is raw, but she is also very loving. And even when she is feeling low, she is loving. And I love that about her.

It’s beautiful to watch her realize that suppressing her pain is not the right answer. Then, you and David have a heart-tugging scene where Yelena breaks down over all her regrets. What did you make of that when you read it on the page? What did you want to explore with that father-daughter relationship?

It wasn’t there on the page — there was a version of it, and it was fine, but it didn’t allow us to shout about the important things.

In the original script, there wasn’t anything to do with Natasha; it was all about them just finding each other annoying and that was just something that David and I were so adamant about. Like, we can’t not have these characters discuss the elephant in the room. We can’t have these two people be pretending as if the last however many years, didn’t happen. They have to shout at each other. That’s what they’re angry about. They haven’t communicated with each other; they haven’t been in each other’s lives.

And grief sometimes does that. Grief is a painful, embarrassing and horrible hole that you get stuck in. They are both flawed, and they need a moment to just like, fucking shout at each other and tell each other they love each other. So, we were very passionate about that — and Jake was so excited that we were — and we just went through versions of what we wanted to say to each other.

Then on that day, when we got to do it, I love working with David. He’s so big and he’s so loud and emotional – both of those characters are such impressive personalities — that it was really, really cool to be able to have a fight. Basically, they just need to have a cuddle.

Exactly, that would solve it. I was thinking back to Comic Con, when you and I found out — and freaked out — over the fact that Robert Downey Jr. was going to be in “Avengers: Doomsday.” Now, there’s even more people.

Loads of people.

Who else did you freak out over finding out they were going to be in it, too? I screamed when I saw Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan were announced.

100%! Oh, god, there’s too many people in it [to choose]! Pedro Pascal, obviously, always and forever. Paul Rudd, yes, so funny. Genuinely, the idea that all of those people are going to be in the same movie is nutso sauce.

As you move on to make that film, Yelena will now be in that “front-facing role” that she asked for. What are you looking forward to most about getting a chance to explore a new side of her?

I hope that she’s happy now. I hope that she feels fulfilled, like she has purpose. And I hope that we get to see some of her light and her charm and her color again, because I loved playing that before.