Florence Pugh is just honest

The Don’t Worry Darling star’s greatest gift as an actor is her ability to discover the essential truth in each character

Florence Pugh knew it was going to be something. At Valentino’s couture show in Rome last July, the 26-year-old British-born actor wore a Barbie pink dress with layers of tulle and a fully sheer top. After trying on the dress, Pugh and designer Pierpaolo Piccioli decided to remove the lining, eliminating any confusion over the intent of the dress’s transparency. “I felt comfortable with my small breasts,” she says, sipping a glass of rosé from a cozy hotel room in the English countryside. “And showing them like that — it made [people] feel more comfortable.”

Pugh got a torrent of internet relatedness. “It was just alarming how concerned they were,” she says. “They were so angry that I was confident, and they wanted me to know that they would never jerk off to me. Well, don’t.” Pugh took to this sentiment on Instagram, berating her body-shaming trolls: “Why are you so scared of boobs? Small? Big? Left? Right? But one? Maybe none? What. Is. So. Terrifying.” The post has since been liked more than 2.3 million times.

“I feel like I’m getting into this groove in my career now, where I know what I can take, what I can give and what I won’t accept anymore.”

Fans expect this kind of fiery candor without BS from Pugh. Since making her big screen debut in 2015 as a teenage girl who considered her own sexuality in Carol Morley’s The Falling, she’s built a career playing women who refuse to be silenced. Over the past seven years, she has starred in nearly two dozen projects, including her breakout performances in a couple of 2019 films, Ari Aster’s indie horror hit Midsommar, and Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of the beloved classic Little Women, the last of which earned her an Oscar. nomination for best supporting actress.

“What really struck me about Florence, and why I think she represents her generation in such an iconic way, is that she really feels like herself. She’s incredibly grounded, but she’s also just so confident,” says Scarlett Johansson , who co-starred with Pugh in the 2021 Marvel film Black Widow. “When I was in my early to mid-20s, I wasn’t quite smug in the same way. I was still growing up in the industry at a time when you really had to give in to be accepted. And she hasn’t at all. She is unapologetically herself. There is a trustworthiness to her.”

Johansson would know. She talks about filming an action scene where she and Pugh were “I don’t know, 30 stories in the air, strapped to this pole” and talking about relationships. The director yelled action, and Johansson recalls in awe that Pugh “could talk about any stupid person she dated, and two seconds later we were just connected, stuck by this thread for our lives.” I was like, this person is just absolute… she just has it. She is so keyed in. It’s an emotional availability. It’s a really rare quality, and it’s the star quality that she has.”

Pugh has established herself as one of the most fearless, multifaceted talents of her generation – that rare actor who manages to both disappear into a role and still radiate a unique star power. “I think all my movies have that element of women being cornered, forced into an opinion, forced into a way of life,” she says. “And then something finally bursts.”

It’s an apt description of Pugh’s character, Alice Chambers, in her latest film, Don’t Worry Darling, a psychological thriller in which Pugh stars alongside Harry Styles and the film’s director, Olivia Wilde. Don’t Worry Darling is set in an idyllic 1950s desert town where every male resident works for the mysterious Victory Project. The women spend their days in a housewife cycle: vacuuming and doing laundry, ballet lessons and shopping, poolside martinis and preparing multi-course dinners. After one of the wives disappears, Alice begins to doubt everything: what they are doing there, where their husbands are going, her own reality.

Pugh was initially offered the supporting role of Bunny, a neighborhood girl with a fantastic wardrobe and killer one-liners. When the pandemic halted production and drastically changed the schedule, the opportunity to play Alice arose. (Wilde ended up playing Bunny.) “It was a different beast,” Pugh says he agreed to take on the lead character, but the decision to make the trade was an easy one. “I love playing a distressed woman.”

Gossip sites and Styles stans have breathlessly followed every little bit about Don’t Worry Darling since production began in the fall of 2020. After Wilde and Styles formed a romantic bond, the internet went into overdrive. When the trailer debuted in May, the sex scenes were predictably what was engrossed in. “If it’s reduced to your sex scenes, or watching the most famous man in the world take someone down, that’s not why we do it. That’s not why I’m in this industry,” says Pugh. “Of course, the nature of hiring the most famous pop star in the world, you’re going to have conversations like that. That’s just not what I’m going to discuss because [this movie] is bigger and better than that. And the people who made it are bigger and better than that.”

“I don’t think people just because they have this job that every aspect of their lives should be looked at and written about. We didn’t sign up for a reality TV show.”

While she hasn’t seen the film, which will debut at the Venice Film Festival later this month, her tribute to the crew and Covid nurses who arrived as early as 2 a.m. to ensure production of the film. clearly crossed the finish line. “If I have to shout about one thing,” she says, “it’s that these people made that film happen. They showed up for work every day and completely respected the process.”

Pugh grew up as one of four siblings in Oxford, England, where her father is a restaurateur and her mother a former dancer. She starred in school plays and performed in her father’s cafes, but had never received any formal training; she responded to an open casting call for The Falling commissioned by her mother with a video audition, recorded on her phone.

The low rasp in Pugh’s voice results from a condition called tracheomalacia, which can cause recurrent bronchitis and upper respiratory tract infections. To protect her health, Pugh spent the early part of the pandemic in lockdown in Los Angeles, seeking refuge in the warmer weather and spreading joy on Instagram with her “Cooking With Flo” videos. Still, she was eager to get back to work. “Part of the reason we’re doing all this is because we’re running away with the circus,” she says. “I think one of the draws for me is that I see places, see people, befriend people, fall in love with people, and then move on and do it again.”

Of course the circus can take on a life of its own. When Pugh and actor-director Zach Braff started dating in 2019, a lot was made of their 21-year age difference. It was an experience that Pugh found cruel and invasive. “Every time I feel like that line has been crossed in my life, whether it’s paparazzi taking private moments, or moments that aren’t even real, or gossip channels encouraging members of the public to share private moments of famous people who walking down the street “I think it’s incredibly wrong,” she says. “I don’t think people just because they have this job that every aspect of their lives should be looked at and written about. We didn’t sign up for a reality TV show.”

Pugh and Braff quietly ended their relationship earlier this year. “We’ve been trying to get this divorce through without the world knowing because it’s been a relationship that everyone has an opinion about,” Pugh says. “We just felt like something like that would really benefit us if we didn’t have millions of people telling us how happy they are that we’re not together. So we did. I automatically get a lump in my throat when I talk about it.”

Before the breakup, the couple worked together on A Good Person, which will be released next year, about a young woman who has to pick up the pieces of her life after a sudden tragedy. Braff wrote the script with Pugh in mind. “The movie we made together was probably one of my favorite experiences,” Pugh says. “It felt like something very natural and easy to do.”It also helped her realize how she wants to work in the future. “I feel like I’m now entering this groove in my career where I know what to take, what to give and what I won’t accept anymore,” said Pugh, who will also appear in Sebastián Lelio’s sweeping Netflix film this fall. The Wonder, just wrapping up work on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, began shooting Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two over the summer. “Being in these last few movies with some of the greats was a really great way to kick myself back into ‘This is what you want to do’ mode.” It’s not all work for the young actress, though. “I’m currently designing my kitchen in London,” says Pugh. “I’m literally designing it so it can be ‘Cooking With Flo’ ready.”

Yet at least some have remained unfazed by all the buzz. “I went to my grandma, and she says, ‘So what’s going on with your nipples?'” Pugh recalls. Pugh showed her some pictures. “She was gasping for breath,” Pugh says. “Because the dress was so beautiful.”