Florence Pugh now has two Marvel projects under her belt, with more on the way, but the actor says that her decision to join the MCU "pissed off" her colleagues in the world of independent film.
"So many people in the indie film world were really pissed off at me," Pugh told Time magazine. "They were like, 'great, now she’s gone forever.' And I’m like, no, I’m working as hard as I used to work. I’ve always done back-to-back movies. It’s just people are watching them now. You just have to be a bit more organized with your schedule."
Her first Marvel project was 2021's Black Widow, introducing her as Yelena Belova, the sister of Scarlett Johansson's title character. She reprised the role in the Disney Plus series Hawkeye and will do so again in the upcoming ensemble movie Thunderbolts, alongside Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and more.
"When I first signed onto Marvel, lots of people from the indie film world were all telling me that I was never going to go back to small movies again, and it always kind of wound me up," the actor previously told Total Film. "Because I think there’s beauty in all types of those films. There’s beauty in the massive, epic storylines like Dune, like Marvel, like even Oppenheimer that I did. They’re amazing, mega movies. And then there’s also beauty in all these little ones that not everyone is going to see, but are going to affect the right person at the right time. I’ve never, ever only thought that I was going to just do one type of movie. I’ve always known that I want to dabble in all areas."
Prior to her superhero initiation, Pugh starred in smaller movies like Ari Aster's folk horror Midsommar and Greta Gerwig's Little Women adaptation, the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination. She can next be seen in the aforementioned Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan's new movie about the US' development of the first nuclear weapons, and Dune: Part Two, the sequel to Denis Villeneuve's 2021 sci-fi epic.
Oppenheimer arrives on the big screen on July 21. In the meantime, check out our guide to the rest of the year's most exciting movie release dates.
