The issue of actors doing their own stunts is often one that has a lot of very strong opinions behind it. Some, like Tom Cruise, insist on doing all their own stunts and have been known to fire insurance companies to make it happen. Other actors are more than willing to let professional stunt people do their jobs. But in between, there are actors who want to do their own stunts, but can run into roadblocks, which is what nearly happened to Florence Pugh on the set of the upcoming Thunderbolts* movie.
Speaking with Fandango, Pugh discusses a major stunt in the film that has her character jumping off the roof of Merdeka 118, the second tallest building in the world. While the scene was planned from the very beginning, it seems there were concerns about cost and the safety of the sequence, but Pugh was the one who insisted, in very strong language, that it needed to happen. She said…
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 [me] off the second tallest building in the world. I was like ‘What the fuck? Of course we are! We have to do that.’
It’s at least understandable why Marvel Studios may not want to throw Florence Pugh off a building. If she had actually gotten hurt doing the stunt, it would have delayed the production significantly, and that would have cost everybody involved a lot of money. This is the main reason that studios often specifically don’t want their actors doing their own stunts.
While it doesn’t sound like Florence Pugh went “the full Tom Cruise,” which is to say that stunt performers were used, she didn’t actually parachute off the second tallest building in the world. The actress played her part and was more than happy to do so. She says she kept after Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige to make sure he let her do it. She continued…
I was being a sassy Karen emailing Kevin [Feige] and saying it’s going to do wonders for the press tour. We have to do this! We’re going to have three women break three different Guinness World Records, and we’ll do this and this. I had to keep on pushing, and then they’re like, ‘Okay, if you want to fall off the second tallest building, we’ll figure it out for you.’
And she did, in fact, fall off the building, so it all worked out. The sequence in question will apparently be the very beginning of Thunderbolts*, so clearly the movie will be starting off big. It’s exciting to see where it all goes from there.
Whatever else happens in Thunderbolts* we know that Florence Pugh will also be in the cast of Avengers: Doomsday. Perhaps, like Tom Cruise does in all the Mission: Impossible movies, Florence Pugh will find a way to top herself with an incredible stunt.
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