Florence Pugh pushed Marvel Studios to let her complete a stunt involving a leap from one of the tallest buildings in the world for the upcoming film Thunderbolts. The building, Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, stands at 2,227 feet and is the second tallest globally.
In an interview with Fandango, Pugh said she had to persist after the studio hesitated due to safety and insurance concerns. “It was in the script, and then slowly as we got closer and closer to shooting, they were like, ‘Yeah, we don’t think it’s gonna happen,’” she said.
The scene, written into the initial version of the production, was nearly scrapped. Pugh began contacting Marvel president Kevin Feige directly. “I was being a sassy Karen just emailing Kevin and being like, ‘Kevin, this is going to do wonders for the press tour, we have to do this,’” she told the outlet.
Marvel eventually agreed. “Then they were like, ‘Okay, you wanna fall off the second-tallest building in the world? We’ll figure that out for you.’”
Pugh described the moment as physically and mentally demanding. She said that although she generally likes heights, this experience was on a different level. “The mental control I had to do that day was like — that was its own superpower,” she said. After completing the jump, she said she fell asleep for three hours.
Pugh returns as Yelena Belova in Thunderbolts, a character she first played in Black Widow and later in the series Hawkeye. She stars alongside Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, Olga Kurylenko, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Lewis Pullman.
The film brings together several recurring characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a team setting. Thunderbolts is directed by Jake Schreier and produced by Marvel Studios. It is scheduled for theatrical release on May 2.
