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Some actors might consider keeping incredible roles even if they weren’t necessarily the right person for the job – but not Florence Pugh; the in-demand actor has revealed she nobly “gives characters back” if she thinks there’s “someone better” to play them.
In the last decade, Pugh has become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, appearing in Black Widow, Little Women, Oppenheimer, Dune: Part 2, and the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday.
This week, she returns to TV for the first time since 2021’s Hawkeye, playing the monstrous Cathy in Netflix’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. It marks Pugh’s first lead TV role since The Little Drummer Girl in 2018.
Pugh has now opened up about her process of selecting roles, revealing that she leads with her gut instinct, which sometimes prompts her to turn down a project if she doesn’t feel she’s perfectly suited to it.
“I’m a firm believer in: you can love the script, you can love the movie or TV series, or whatever it is, but we all know if we should do a role or not; we can feel it – I know we can feel it,” she told The Independent.
“Sometimes, there have been moments in my career where it’s amazing, but I know that there’s someone better for that role, and I have to give the character back to the process of finding the actor. I’ve done that a handful of times in my career because I owe it to all of these characters that they find the right home.”
Pugh, 30, said she loves “finding a personal connection” to characters, which she experienced when Zoe Kazan approached her about playing Cathy in her East of Eden adaptation. This was no small task considering that Pugh was in her early 20s at the time, and the show follows Cathy from age 16 to her early 40s.
“That was a huge moment for me and my confidence,” Pugh explained. “It really allowed me to step up in a way that’s affected me hugely.”
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Pugh, who has also produced the series, described Cathy as “a huge beast of a character”, adding: “To get my hands on something like that at the level of career I was at then, was so exciting, so thrilling. I was so young! I didn’t know how I was gonna do it. That’s usually the thing that terrifies me. But I had to be involved immediately.”
East of Eden is the latest adaptation of Steinbeck’s 1952 family saga, which was made into a hit film by Elia Kazan – Zoe Kazan’s grandfather – in 1955. It starred James Dean and Jo Van Fleet, who won an Oscar for playing Cathy.
The story follows the Trask brothers, Adam and Charles (Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist), whose lives are drastically altered by the arrival of the mysterious Cathy. East of Eden is released on Netflix on Thursday (1 October).