Florence Pugh by Daniel Jackson Talks 'Little Women' and 'Black Widow' for Vogue US February 2020

From Little Women to Marvel Superhero, actor Florence Pugh is center stage, wearing Celine, Erdem, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors and more, styled by Jorden Bickham. Daniel Jackson is in the studio for American Vogue’s February 2020 cover story . / Hair by Esther Langham; makeup by Susie Sobol

Gaby Wood conducts the interview.

Pugh says the story “deals with some really hard things. It’s rough and painful and emotional and funny, and not in any way. . . girly. It’s about broken women picking up the pieces.” Shortland adds that she—along with Pugh, Johansson, and Rachel Weisz, who also stars in the film—“wanted to make something intimate within the massive Marvel universe. We created female relationships with flesh and blood. They didn’t have to play nice.”

Just 24, Pugh has been working as an actor for the past seven years, eschewing predictable routes to fame and choosing intriguing roles without ostentation. In 2018, she starred in Park Chan-wook’s supremely stylish TV adaptation of John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl—a performance so fully realized that it inspired le Carré himself to put a character named Florence in his most recent novel. Last year, she starred in the wrestling comedy Fighting With My Family, made by Stephen Merchant, cocreator of The Office; in Midsommar; and, most notably, in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women. This year she’ll play Yelena, Scarlett Johansson’s athletic sidekick, in the Marvel movie Black Widow. All of which has made Pugh, somewhat meteorically, a Hollywood performer of wide-ranging, unconventional power—and a person who does, it seems, know exactly what she wants.

Both ‘Little Women’ and ‘Black Widow’ are directed by women: Greta Gerwig for ‘Little Women’ and Cate Shortland for ‘Black Widow’. Talking about Pugh in ‘Black Widow’, Australian Shortland, who was selected from 70 directorial candidates, says that the actor did most of her own stunts: “She is bloody scary. Steely. Absolutely will not back down. She has a healthy amount of anger in her as a person, at the injustices she sees around her.”

‘Black Widow’ is only the second film in the Marvel universe to focus on women. Brie Larson’s ‘Captain Marvel’ was the first.

“They’re actually making a reason for women to talk in films now. When a woman speaks, she’s going to have something to say.”

Consider that ‘Little Women’ was written by Louisa May Alcott in 1868, and the therapy sessions around the movie involve our coming to grips with ambition, perceived conniving around men, the question of marriage, independence and a host of other ‘female’ topics 150 years later!!!

We have our second female Marvel superhero 150 years later and hopefully more breakthroughs in the works. Yes, it’s progress, but consider that it took us 150 years to get this far.

When the subject is women’s advancement, the wheels of change move real, real, real slow. Just ask Harvey Weinstein, who doesn’t deny that he bedded or sexually coerced about 100 women who wanted to work in Hollywood. He just says they loved it, and — if they didn’t — it was news to him.

To be fair, there are followup emails expressing affection for the married man by a few of the starlets he sought to advance, dick-in-hand. In addition to Weinstein’s trial in New York, he was charged early last week in Los Angeles in one case of assault in 2013, and a second case of rape. The cases are alleged to have happened in February 2013 over two-consecutive days.

All in all, we have a cultural reckoning happening on multiple fronts in Trumplandia. And Hollywood women are leading the parade.