Don’t mess with Florence Pugh on a film set because she’s “not standing for bullshit behavior” anymore.
The Oscar-nominated actress got candid during a recent interview with Elle magazine about what she’s learned throughout the last 12 years working in Hollywood. After making her film debut in 2014’s The Falling, Pugh has grown to become one of the most prominent actors in the industry, starring in top projects from Midsommar and Oppenheimer to Thunderbolts* and the Dune franchise.
“The thing that I’m getting better and better at is protecting myself,” she admitted. “Every time I work on a movie, I get more confident in the way that I can protect myself and the way that I can lead a film set, and just not stand for bullshit anymore. I’m not doing it. I’m not standing for bullshit behavior. I’m not standing for bullshit attitude. I’m not allowing for people to be rude to the crew.”
“You just get bolder and bigger and more confident with time, and you want to be around and work with the right people,” she continued. “And the moment someone is making that vibe feel off, everybody feels it. I don’t want to deal with messy. It’s just about surrounding yourself with professionals who have the same way of working in mind: Show up on time, don’t be rude, don’t be a misogynist.”
Having reached this point in her career, it’s not lost on Pugh the influential position she holds. That’s why she uses her public platform to speak out on matters that are important to her, from Hollywood beauty standards to her support for Palestine. Most recently, she also spoke out against the alleged sexual assault at Cornell University.
The East of Eden star told Elle that she felt compelled to make a statement “because I’m a woman who cares about women.”
“I care about women I know, and I care about women I don’t know,” Pugh said. “And if we allow for stories like that to become in any way normal, then we are allowing ourselves to continue toward that destiny of abuse and rape being accepted as a norm.”
“Rape can never ever be a conversation that we move on from. It has to be something that we look at, face-on, and we demand justice, accountability, and for the rapist to see what they have done to someone’s life. Because if we don’t, we’re accepting it. And I don’t ever, ever, ever want to live in a world where we move on from it easily,” she added.
And don’t dare censor Pugh — like what she accuses Meta of doing with her Instagram post about the Cornell University lawsuit — because she’ll call that out too.
“No one fucking censors me,” she told Elle. “Don’t even try. That’s just going to add fuel to the fire.”
