Florence Pugh Begged Marvel to Let Her Jump Off a Building
Florence Pugh saw the world’s second tallest building and thought, “Yep, I wanna jump off of that.” During press for her upcoming film Thunderbolts*, she told Fandango that she had to beg Marvel to let her do the stunt herself as Black Widow/Yelena. “I got on all the emails. It was in the script, and then slowly as we got closer and closer to shooting, they said they don’t think it’s going to happen because it’s a crazy insurance ordeal and obviously we’re not going to throw FP off the second tallest building in the world,” Pugh shared. “I was like what the fuck? Of course we are! We have to do that.” The building in question was the Merdeka 118 building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which stands about 2,722 feet tall, so maybe Marvel had a point in their insurance worries. But they gotta think about the future Oscar nominations if people follow in her footsteps.
Florence Pugh explains how she convinced Marvel and Kevin Feige to let her jump off the second tallest building in the world in #Thunderbolts*. Only in theaters May 2 - Get tickets on Fandango. https://t.co/Tckyknk48x pic.twitter.com/1rczepKKYG
— Fandango (@Fandango) April 14, 2025
However, Pugh was playing 4-d chess when she was trying to convince the studio to do the jump: think about the marketing, baby! “I was being a ‘sassy Karen’ emailing Kevin and saying it’s going to do wonders for the press tour,” Pugh explained on her journey. “We have to do this. We’re going to have three women break three different Guinness World Records… I don’t mind heights. I quite like them and enjoy them, but that was a whole different ballgame and insane. The mental control I had to do that day was its own super power.” The mental control must’ve been intense as Pugh had to take a “3-hour nap” after each round, which is the same excuse fellow nappers say to justify a mid-day snooze, but it has way less of an impact.
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