Florence Pugh reveals the ‘new’ side of Yelena in Thunderbolts*

Florence Pugh has made a stunning return as Yelena Belova in Marvel's Thunderbolts*, and the actress is all set to explore newer arcs of her character as she takes on the title of Black Widow. Belova is leading the team of anti-heroes in her latest stint, and the actress has been pretty open about the acting journey while in the shoes of one of Marvel's most heroic female leads.

Talking to Collider about all the ingredients that went into creating Yelena, Pugh said:

"One of my biggest things with Yelena is I wanted to create a woman that maybe we weren't expecting. I didn't want her to be a silhouette. I wanted her to be unique and bizarre and excited for life, and have strange timing and be strangely comic."

Pugh then added how Yelena's character explores the deeper themes of mental health in the film are central to the character, as she said,

"I loved that I was allowed to play someone who was struggling and was suffering. That, to me, is what I'm grateful that I get to put my mark on on where we're going with the MCU. We got to make a movie that feels textually different."

Rightly so, Thunderbolts* follows a pretty different path than all the other Marvel films that came before it and has a more human narrative to it than just being about action, powers, and cityscapes. The film follows the six misfits as they come out of their dark holes and gang up together to fight something bigger.

More details about Thunderbolts*

Directed by Jake Schreier and releasing in theatres on May 1, 2025, Thunderbolts* is the last film in Marvel's fifth phase and will likely put an end to a lot of the events going on in the MCU as of now. It will also lay down the foundation for Avengers: Doomsday as the Thunderbolts* will return for the anticipated film- the nature of which fans will know once they've reached the end of this one.

Pugh also talked about how Thunderbolts* explores themes that are different than what previous films have gone through, as she told the outlet,

"It's a movie that isn't about the usual baddies versus goodies. It's actually about something very common, and it hopefully has many different parts of it that we can all see ourselves in, and that's a very cool honor to have to be a part of a movie like this."

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Florence Pugh is being joined by Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, Wyatt Russell as John Walker/U.S. Agent, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr/Ghost, Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.

Thunderbolts* will be in theaters on May 1, 2025.

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