Florence Pugh did most of her own stunts on Black Widow

Florence Pugh did most of her own stunts while filming Black Widow.

The Little Women actress got her first taste for stunt work while filming the 2019 wrestling drama Fighting with my Family, but had to take her skills to a whole new level to play a superhero alongside Scarlett Johansson in Black Widow’s first solo movie.

And according to director Cate Shortland, Pugh did most of the stunts herself, even though she had a stunt double.

“She is b**ody 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,” she told Vogue magazine.

As soon as she got to the set, the 24-year-old approached the stunt department to do further training for the role, with her adding, “Learning from them was my favourite part.”

“I didn’t quite know what it was to be involved in one of these films,” Pugh explained. “Obviously you have to be physically able because the whole point is that you’re a superhero.”

Plot details are being kept under wraps, but Pugh shared that it “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,” she described, while Shortland added that Pugh, Johansson, and their co-star Rachel Weisz “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.”

Black Widow, the second Marvel film to have a female lead, hits cinemas in May.