THE ARRIVAL OF Florence Pugh
It comes as a surprise to discover after our interview that actor Florence Pugh isn’t a seasoned thirtysomething but a self-possessed and wise-beyond-her-years 23-year-old. This is, after all, someone who famously scalded the bar manager at the Budapest hotel where she was staying for making her and her friends — a group that included Timothée Chalamet — feel unwelcome. It’s not as though she was checking out the next day, either — she was staying on at the hotel while filming horror flick Midsommar (more on that later). After playing Pugh’s onscreen husband in Outlaw King, Chris Pine said of his British co-star, who was just 21 at the time: “The level of assuredness and centredness [she] has is off the charts … I have never met an actor so comfortable in her own skin.”
“There I was, recreating some sort of really dramatic death scene while my mum drove along listening to Macy Gray.”
When we talk, Pugh is in London after an in-demand stretch that’s seen her (his character met an unfortunate end in season six), and her older sister, Arabella Gibbins, is a voice-trained stage and comedy performer. “It’s quite nice for all of us to rise at the same time and to see how success is measured in all different ways,” Pugh says of her siblings’ respective trajectories. The family spent three years living in Spain, partly due to the health issues Pugh suffered as a child (she was in and out of hospital with bouts of asthma and collapsed airways). Her parents hoped the reprieve from Oxford’s achingly low temperatures would help with her respiratory issues, with limited success. They eventually returned, and she went on to attend the same Oxford private school as Emilia Clarke and Sir Richard Branson’s daughter Holly.
