‘I was being a sassy Karen': Florence Pugh's skyscraper stunt positions her as the new Tom Cruise

The Guardian

17-04-2025

If you ever needed definitive proof that Marvel has lost pace with the zeitgeist, just look at the panicky marketing of Thunderbolts*. The film opens in a couple of weeks and, according to the trade press, is tracking to open soft.
Had this been six or seven years ago, then fans would be clamouring to see Thunderbolts* simply because it was the latest instalment of the grand MCU soap opera. After all, it's a film that stars several side characters from older Marvel films and TV shows, and there was a time when audiences would go bananas for this sort of thing. But as the last few MCU films have shown, that approach doesn't really work any more.
For a while Marvel attempted to trade on the intrigue of the asterisk, but that fell down because the people who cared guessed what it meant and the people who didn't couldn't care less. Then came the weird trailer last month where the movie tried to rebrand itself as an A24 film, declaring itself to be 'absolute cinema' because it hired the production designer from Hereditary and the editor of Minari (and, in Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the star of You Hurt My Feelings). And while there was a lot of novelty about this – when was the last time a Marvel film made a big deal about the pedigree of the people who made it? – it didn't do a lot to shift the needle.
But now, finally, it looks as if Marvel has cracked it. The final flurry of pre-release marketing about Thunderbolts* doesn't make a big deal about the superheroes or the mythology or the cinematography or anything like that. No, this time it's being much smarter. This time it's unveiling Florence Pugh as the new Tom Cruise.
Thunderbolts* contains a big setpiece stunt in which Florence Pugh jumps off the 2,722ft Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, the second tallest skyscraper on Earth. Now it has been revealed that not only did Pugh perform the stunt herself, but she also pleaded with the Marvel brass to do it.
'As we got closer and closer to shooting, they said they don't think it's going to happen because it's a crazy insurance ordeal,' Pugh told Variety. 'I was like what the fuck? Of course we are! We have to do that.' Referring to herself as a 'sassy Karen' for refusing to let the issue drop, she then described the moment they relented. 'They're like, 'OK, if you want to fall off the second tallest building, we'll figure it out for you.''
These claims are backed up by a film that was posted to YouTube five days ago, in which we see Pugh jump off the aforementioned building. In truth, as far as the footage shows, it's less of a jump and more of a dangle – she appears to step off the roof and descend a small distance before she's winched back up – but nevertheless it looks absolutely terrifying.
It's a very Mission: Impossiblish formula. You'll remember that the entire selling point of 2023's Dead Reckoning: Part One was the sight of Tom Cruise riding a motorbike off the side of a mountain. Indeed, by the time the film came out we'd already seen the stunt in its various forms hundreds of times.
Of course, it turns out sharing your biggest stunt ahead of time is not always completely wise. Box office grosses for Dead Reckoning were lower than expected because we'd been given the exciting bit for free several years before it was released. This year's instalment, The Final Reckoning, is doing a better job of hinting at the big stunt – Tom Cruise flapping about on the underside of a corkscrewing biplane – without revealing the whole thing.
Time will tell whether Thunderbolts* should have been less generous with the stunt footage. But for now that doesn't really matter. What matters is that Florence Pugh wants to do her own stunts, and she's fearless about it. If there's a Thunderbolts* 2, maybe she'll do a helmets-off motorbike chase, or a one-take skydive. Maybe she'll beat Cruise and literally shoot into space. Maybe she'll even start sending cakes to people for Christmas. Either way, this might be the start of an amazing action career.