The 27-year-old actress candidly addresses how one person not pulling their weight on set can affect a movie.
After nearly a decade in Hollywood, Florence Pugh has not been immune to unraveling projects.
In an interview as one of TIME's 2023 Next Generation Leaders, the Oscar nominee candidly addresses how a movie can sour before it ever reaches a theater. "A whole film set, it’s everybody making a huge effort because they want to be there," the actress explains. "And if someone doesn’t want to be there or if someone isn’t pulling their weight, you can feel it. The film feels wrong."
Asked whether she's thought while on set that a project was falling apart, Pugh replies, "Definitely."
The 27-year-old star, whose resume is home to notable credits including Don't Worry Darling, Midsommar, and Little Women, did not dive into specifics about which project she was referring to. She did, however, reflect on another hazard of Hollywood: the pressures she experienced to bend to the industry's narrow body standards.
She's previously spoken out about executives trying to change her weight and appearance after she landed a lead role in a since-defunct pilot as a teenager. Pugh returned to her native England, where she landed the lead in William Oldroyd's Lady Macbeth. Years later, she had a new role in Hollywood -- one dictated by a different kind of diet.
"The person I came back to was a female wrestler with muscles and big thighs who made her own name as a champion,” she told TIME, referencing her character in Fighting With My Family opposite Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. "I quite liked that because the last time I’d been there I was told I needed to lose weight -- it was just so not the person I wanted to be."
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