Florence Pugh covers the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK, all to promote Thunderbolts. This is not her first time in a Marvel movie – she played Yelena Belova in Black Widow with the understanding that she was being primed to move into the MCU more thoroughly. She’s reprising the character in The Thunderbolts and she has a more central role. But Flo is still Flo, and her interviews are often chaotic. She’s a whirling dervish off-screen, always busy and always trying to surround herself with friends and family. Some highlights from Bazaar:

Why she even decided to do Black Widow: Pugh surprised herself by falling in love with the Black Widow script. “Until then, I hadn’t really seen it as something that was about the lives of women,” she says. When she returns this spring as Yelena, she will be the film’s lead character. Thunderbolts’ cast includes David Harbour and Sebastian Stan, who are part of a motley crew of trained killers forced to collaborate.

She recently filmed a miniseries adaptation of East of Eden: She has just come back from New Zealand, where she has been making a miniseries of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, playing the anti-heroine Cathy Ames. In many ways, the character is perfect for Pugh’s tastes – a woman Steinbeck himself describes as having a “malformed soul”. “People keep on saying to me, ‘I read the book. She’s a terrible person.’ But I get really arsey about that. I can explain all the awful things that she does. It’s my responsibility to understand the character, because they can’t defend themselves.”

Her career has come at the expense of her personal life. “I’ve worked back-to-back since I started, and I’ve missed so much,” she says, listing family events, birthdays, barbecues with friends. “I’ve now come to terms with things that I don’t like about myself and want to change. I don’t want to have things just happen to me any more.”

Splitting from Zach Braff: “It was a scary break-up and I think that movie [We Live In Time] forced me to realise I can’t wait for people any more. I can’t accept this version of love. I have to help myself.” She tells me she is currently in love and is approaching her new relationship very differently. “I’m more sympathetic to the people who are in love with me, because it’s not easy! I’m tricky – I’m always busy, I can never make dates. But it’s not good enough for me to ask someone to just accept that. I’ll just end up alone. I don’t want that – I want a family.”

She’s freezing her eggs: Having being diagnosed with endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome, she has begun the process of freezing her eggs which she describes as “tiring and horrible”, though she recognises she is lucky in being able to afford the procedure. “There was a clickbait article about me doing it. I know you shouldn’t read the comments but… urgh. I wish there was a little more tenderness and understanding.”

She wants to do more than armchair activism: “Instagram posts can only go so far. Yes, they make you aware, yes, they can change a few opinions, but I want to make sure that I’m awake to what’s going on and feel like I’m a part of the change.” At a time when, as she puts it, “plenty of unstable, powerful men are dictating our futures”, she would like to be on the front line of the resistance movement. “Being more active in this very aggressive change in the world right now feels correct to me. At least I know that my energy is going somewhere.”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

I was with her for most of these quotes, but I rolled my eyes at her comments about East of Eden. Don’t yell at me, but East of Eden is Steinbeck’s greatest work, not The Grapes of Wrath. I understand the perspective of “needing to just focus on the character,” but she seems to be rather careless with Steinbeck’s own words, especially given that the source material is literally one of the greatest American novels in history? She’s executive producing the miniseries too, which doesn’t give me much hope that the series will be a faithful adaptation of the novel. As for the rest of it… it’s great that she’s freezing her eggs and I agree that people should be more considerate when writing about that issue. It also sort of sounds like she has a hard time being a considerate partner though? “I’m tricky – I’m always busy, I can never make dates.” We’ll see.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of Bazaar UK.