PASSING THE TORCH
THE LONG-AWAITED BLACK WIDOW SEES SCARLETT JOHANSSON SAYING GOODBYE TO THE MCU, AND FLORENCE PUGH STORMING IN. WE GET THEM TOGETHER TO TALK MENTORING, ENVELOPE-PUSHING AND ASS-KICKING
TTHERE’S A VERY real chance that Cate Shortland’s Black Widow might be Scarlett Johansson’s final Marvel Cinematic Universe outing as its title character, the wily super-spy/ one-woman army Natasha Romanoff. Which would be a huge shame. Because, while it’s Johansson’s eighth trip on the MCU merry-goround since she first appeared in 2010’s Iron Man 2, it’s Florence Pugh’s first, as Natasha’s fellow former Soviet spy, antagonist, and sister-of-sorts Yelena Belova, in a prequel seemingly designed to bestow the Black Widow mantle upon her — now that Natasha herself lies dead, seemingly irrevocably, on an alien planet. And if the easy, funny, sparky chemistry that the American and British actors displayed on a call with Empire earlier this summer translates to the big screen, Marvel should be trying to get them together at every opportunity. Prequels, spin-offs, sitcoms, whatever works. Still, as someone once said, the future is not set, and during Empire’s joint interview, Johansson and Pugh talked about the present, the past, and the path that led Marvel to making a female-fronted/directed movie that aims to break new ground…
When was the last time you guys saw each other in the flesh?
Scarlett Johansson: I saw you around
Oscars time…
Florence Pugh: But we did reshoots two or three days after that, remember, babe?
Johansson: Oh, that’s right. We were both sick. Pugh: We saw a lot of each other during awards season, which was so cool because we had just finished a film together. And then I got to go and poke Scarlett Johansson on red carpets and be like, “It’s okay, I know her.” But yeah, it’s very weird not to be with her. We started over a year ago, babe. It was May [2019] that we were doing training together.
Johansson: Before you and I started working on it together, I had a year or two of development stuff. It’s been so long. It’s been almost three years, actually. I thought about it the other day. “When did I start this conversation with significance?” I remember when we were shooting Infinity War I first started talking to Kevin [Feige] about this as an actual, real possibility. That was so long ago. It’s been aeons.
You guys met for the first time over a year ago, presumably kicking the shit out of each other?
Pugh: Literally. I’d never done one of these films before, so I was pretty eager to get in and start learning how to roly-poly, because I didn’t know
exactly how much was expected of someone coming onto one of these films. The funniest thing was that we started doing some scene rehearsals, which were lovely, but in the first week of shooting Scarlett and I had one of our biggest fight scenes for our characters, where they see each other for the first time in years. And it was the first time that we’d met, so we’d be doing these rehearsals, and I’d be like, “Okay, I choke you right now and then you throw me into the wall.”
Johansson: It’s like a very aggressive trust exercise. As actors, normally you fall back on the person or you stare at each other and say the same word for, like, 20 minutes. It was like that, but a chokehold, basically. Although I have to say that it was effective. Only as actors would anybody ever have the opportunity to do something like that. It’s insane. It’s such a funny, weird job where you can meet somebody for the first time in a play rehearsal and a day-and-ahalf later you’re screaming and sobbing at each other and holding each other and you have snot dripping down your face, and you’ve exposed the whole fragility of your child self.
Pugh: The coolest thing about that is when you meet someone who is just as turned on by that kind of stuff as you are. It makes the whole experience that little bit more enjoyable. Not everybody likes to get thrown on the floor all the time, but Scarlett and I loved it.
Scarlett, you must have been beating people up within seconds of meeting them for a while now.
Johansson: Yes. It’s strange to say it, but it’s old-hat to me. It’s really funny, though. It has been a decade in time and I know where my energy is best used. I know I’m probably not going to reach professional Muay Thai level in four months. And so to waste my energy on matching a professional athlete is a waste of my time. I know it’s most important for me to be capable and look capable and have that kind of confidence in whatever I’m doing. But it wasn’t always that way. I’ve spent so many movies really worrying about stuff that basically never got used, or putting together a six-minute fight sequence and then showing it to the director on the day and he’s like, “I think we only need 15 seconds of that.” And you’re like, “Whaaaaaat? I’ve wasted all this time!” So I guess I’m more efficient now.
Pugh: When we were doing that first fight I was really worried about a roll I had to do, and I was basically trying to dive in the air while chopping her legs and then roll. For a normal person that’s near-impossible. And I remember worrying about it: “I just don’t know if I’m gonna get that roll.” Scarlett was like, “Babe, there’s a reason why you have someone who looks exactly like you in your corner. She’s an athlete and she knows how to do it and it’ll look great.”
There’s the stuff you don’t have doubles for: the acting stuff. Can you talk about that, and working on this relationship between these two characters that’s got to be sisterly, but with an edge to it?
Pugh: It was a complete joy. But also, I really came on board to a storyline I wasn’t a part of and needed to be educated on. I know a bit from watching the previous films, but it was really awesome to have the woman I was working with not only be the queen of this land, but she knew
everything. It was great to come on board and flesh out this complicated relationship, where there is so much love for one another and also so much pain behind that love that it takes a whole film for them to really open up to one another.
In a lot of ways, the pressure was not really on me. I had the confidence in Cate [Shortland], our director, to lead all of us as a troupe of actors, to guide us and find more depth in something, or a warmth in something, or different shades. And so it felt like a small movie inside of a big movie, I guess. When you watch it, it feels like that too. It has an intimacy about it. These relationships are arguably some of the most complicated that Marvel has ever dealt with. They’re deep, messy family shit. We got to do some really rewarding stuff dramatically, which is what we come to work for.
Johansson: The movie is a prequel. There’s a big reason for that, which is that Natasha is now dead in the MCU. Which was a big shock — Florence, I presume you’ve seen Pugh: Johansson:
[laughs] I’ve seen it, don’t worry. Spoiler alert!
Scarlett, you said that you’d talked with Kevin about this movie while filming At what point did you have that conversation about Natasha dying in Johansson:
Normally before we’d start any next chapter it would be normal for Kevin to call the cast before a script came in and say, “This is where we are.” It’s funny — because, having produced this, I see what the process is of the developmental part of the storytelling. It was before shooting Infinity War that I was made aware of what was going to happen in Endgame. Kevin called me and said, “Look, obviously we’re at a place where there’s going to be big sacrifices and big losses.” We had all anticipated that. So it didn’t seem out of character. It kind of made sense to me, I guess, even though I was sad about it. But after I hung up the phone I remember I thought, “Okay, I guess it’s me.” And it took me a minute to process it. It was bittersweet, but it was not a shock.
But you knew you had this in the works, too. Johansson:
I hadn’t had that conversation yet. I assumed that Infinity War and then what became Endgame would be it. It wasn’t until we were shooting Infinity War that we started to have that conversation about what is it? When they said, “We want to talk about Black Widow,” I was like, “What is that? How’s that going to work?” I never intended on making an origin story, obviously. I didn’t want to be playing a 17-year-old version of myself. So I had no idea how this was going to work exactly, if there was a Time Stone involved or what.
Florence, have you been eagerly watching the MCU and Scarlett’s progression as
Natasha over the last decade or so? Pugh:
I wasn’t a fanatic. No offence, Scarlett. I don’t know all the information about all the characters, but I can recall watching them in my teen years. I’ve definitely kept up-to-date. So much so that I was really sad — I remember the first leaks of Natasha dying and I remember that it felt very unfair because she was the coolest woman. I remember being shocked. But it’s funny to have worked on the film that people have been cheering for from the sidelines for ages, and to get to work alongside and watch the Black Widow.
Florence says all this stuff, but she has so much integrity and her character has so much integrity. She really stands on her own.
Johansson:
The character is so full of life and so grounded and in herself. They’re all qualities that Florence has in spades. It’s really fresh. It’s such a fresh, exciting performance to watch.
Both of you entered the MCU at very different points. Scarlett, it was still a big risk when you made Iron Man 2, and over the years your contribution has helped them get to the point where a film like this is no longer a risk. And, frankly, the MCU was a big old swinging sausage-fest for years… Johansson: Yes! And now it’s much more representative, and much more diverse. So things have changed in that way. Johansson:
A swinging sausage-fest? [laughs]
Yeah, thank God. We’re evolving with the times. What I can say is that, speaking specifically about this film — because it’s impossible to encompass the entire Marvel Universe and how it’s so much bigger than we ever could have imagined it to be — there’s so much going on. It’s beyond comprehension. When I started ten years ago, I didn’t look at a script. I didn’t know what it was going to be. I was putting all my faith in [Iron Man 2 director] Jon Favreau. But none of us from that very beginning could have imagined that we’d be here, talking about this kind of stuff. I think this film in particular is very much reflective of what’s going on in regards to the Time’s Up movement and the #Metoo movement. It would be such a miss if we didn’t address that stuff, if this film didn’t take that head-on. I think, particularly for Cate, it was so important for her to make a movie about women who are helping other women, who lift other women up out of a very difficult situation. Someone asked me if Natasha was a feminist. Of course she is, it’s obvious. It’s kinda an asinine question.
I’ll strike that from my list… Johansson:
[laughs] But this film will hopefully not just elevate the genre, but will push the boundary for Marvel yet again and push them out of their comfort zone in a whole other kind of a way. It’s a really unique opportunity to make a film of this scale that has a very moving and profound and powerful message behind it. I think we’ve accomplished that.
Yeah. And you get that in the first ten minutes of the film. You’re already struck by amazing things that wouldn’t have been in a film, any film, even just five years ago. It was really cool to watch.
Pugh: That’s interesting. Like Black Panther, this would have been a very different movie ten years ago. Johansson:
I’m sure a Black Widow movie could have been made ten years ago, but it would not have been this film, for sure. It would have been some other thing that probably would have looked great. [laughs]
And now it’s done. Pugh:
It’s incredible. I have to say: I watched a cut, I was sat on the sofa and every single time anything happened that had any action I was like, “Come on, Natasha! Go! Go!” I was so excited to be screaming at my own television.
Do you do this for all of Scarlett’s movies? Say, for Marriage Story? “Go, Scarlett, go!” Johansson:
Oh yeah, she does it for all of them. She loved the divorce court scene. She was rooting for me.
I’m always rooting for all her characters. “Get a divorce!”
Pugh: