Florence Pugh admitted that she did not fully connect with her character Yelena Belova in “Black Widow” until she implemented her Russian accent.
The actress reflected on her entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, saying that she knew she wanted her storyline to expand beyond the one movie, but she did not think Yelena would have stuck around with her British accent.
“She sounded so boring. I was like, ‘Oh, this girl, she’s going to be miserable,’” Pugh said in an interview with Vanity Fair published Friday.
“Then I remember I was at home once and I was cooking my dinner. I just decided to start doing some of the lines in a Russian accent, and she suddenly became funny and dry and witty and sarcastic,” she added.
Pugh expressed gratitude to Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, specifically, for letting her create “something special” with the character beyond what was on the page.
“From that moment, I was able to actually create who Yelena is now, like the oddities, the weirdness, the weird timing,” she said. “I was able to riff a bit more. I had more freedom in creating lines, moments.”
The “Thunderbolts” actress also remembered how Scarlett Johansson was an impactful mentor on her during the “Black Widow” days. She said that her fight scene with the actress was her first week on set for the film.
“I was entering this mega opportunity, this mega set with this movie star that I had been watching maybe my whole life nearly,” she said.
“I remember feeling like I needed to keep my ears and eyes open all the time because there was just so much for me to absorb and there was so much that I didn’t know,” Pugh added. “I’d never been in something like this before.”
She recalled the training for the stunt work was intense, but Johansson was helpful in teaching the burgeoning actress to create boundaries around the work but also have fun.
“It’s a different style of making movies in Marvel movies. They’re huge, so it can be sometimes quite intimidating,” she said. “It’s great to have a woman like that that you can chat to about the highs and the lows in this industry.”
You can watch Pugh’s full interview in the video above.
