Florence Pugh has stunned fans with a jaw-dropping stunt in her upcoming Marvel film Thunderbolts, drawing comparisons to action legend Tom Cruise.
Florence Pugh, who reprises her role as Yelena Belova, takes a death-defying leap off Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118, the world’s second-tallest building, in a thrilling sequence that has become one of the movie’s most talked-about moments.
In a recent interview , Florence Pugh revealed the behind-the-scenes story of how the scene made it back into the film after being initially removed from the script.
“So what I will say is that it wasn’t my idea to go up there. That was already in the script, and it was already such an impressive way to start a script by having someone fall off a building,” she explained.
“When it got taken out, that was when I really got sassy,” she added with a laugh, referencing her email to Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige urging the team to restore the dramatic opening.
Florence Pugh’s bold move has drawn inevitable comparisons to Tom Cruise, who is renowned for performing his own stunts in the Mission: Impossible and Top Gun franchises.
“Anything that Tom Cruise does, stunt-wise and acting-wise, is just totally impressive,” Pugh said. “I’d be mad if I didn’t want to pretend that I was him for two seconds.”
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Though Florence Pugh jokes she has no plans to fly fighter jets or race motorbikes like Tom Cruise, she admitted the stunt was the perfect level of adrenaline for her.
“This was a perfect amount of stunt for me. It certainly was fun to pretend to be Tom Cruise for a few seconds,” she said.
Florence Pugh stars in Thunderbolts alongside a team of Marvel antiheroes, including Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and John Walker (Wyatt Russell). With the film hitting cinemas this Friday, Pugh’s skyscraper stunt is expected to be a major highlight.