Florence Pugh explains why she fought to jump off world’s 2nd tallest building for new movie

JOE spoke to Florence Pugh and her co-star David Harbour about their new blockbuster, which is out in cinemas this week.

The introduction sees assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) tasked with infiltrating a covert lab located within Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - the second-tallest building in the world.

To do this, Yelena calmly base jumps off the top of the building, descending into the lab space via parachute before facing off against several guards.

It's a brilliant sequence, which is all the more impressive given that Pugh did part of the stunt for real.

Footage shared by Marvel Entertainment shows the actress, attached to a harness, stepping off Merdeka 118.

In interviews, Pugh has talked about how she had to convince the producers of Thunderbolts* to let her do this. This is because, as her director, Jake Schreier, notes in the Marvel footage: "It's not a zero-risk thing to attempt."

And so, when JOE spoke to Pugh and her co-star David Harbour about their new blockbuster, we had to ask the actress why she was so set on doing the stunt practically when it must have obviously been very scary.

In response, she told us:

"Yeah, it got taken out the script like a month into shooting because I think they just looked at the logistics and they were like: 'How are we going to go to Malaysia and how are we going to throw Florence off and no way are the insurance companies going to like [this]. This is just not gonna happen.'

"So, it got pulled out. When it came out of the script I was so sad because if I felt like it really started the movie in such an impressive way, a way that I feel like this movie deserved to start because it is an impressive movie and so I basically did everything in my power to make sure that they couldn't say no to me."

Laughing, she adds: "I was so annoying. I wrote emails and the problem is is that that no one could help me really.

"I remember Jake taking me aside and he was like: 'Florence, if you want to do this, you have to be the person that champions that. Because we can't be pushing it. Because we can't be the ones that actually push you over the edge of a building. You have to be the one that does this because, obviously, there's a lot of risks that go into it. And if something were to happen, we can't be the ones that made you do it. Like you have to do it.'

"So then I was like: 'Right!'."

Pugh also notes that there was another personal reason that she wanted to do the stunt.

She explained:

"It's also just something that I feel really proudly of that I wanted to be able to do for women. Three women were able to break records in doing this stunt and that was just so cool to be able to say that we made that happen.

"We had Heidi Moneymaker, who is the first female stunt coordinator to do a stunt like that. My stunty Sarah [Irwin] is the first stunty to, in the same breath that I did, go off the building.

"It was just really amazing to be able to do that. And to be able to talk about it now in our press sequences is exactly the reason why I wanted us to be able to do it."

Thunderbolts* arrives in Irish cinemas on Thursday, 1 May.