Florence Pugh has been so integral to the Hollywood shift over the last five years, it seems absurd to think about a time when she was almost a sitcom star on a FOX cable comedy. Could you imagine something like Glee but with Flo’s signature pout? That was almost a reality when the then-unknown actress landed a role on Studio City, a show about a pop star and her songwriting dad who turns into a celebrity drug dealer.
While the concept is a bit like a grown-up Hannah Montana, Pugh recalled that the studio was not kind and immediately wanted to change almost everything about her. She didn’t want to take the opportunity for granted, though. “I felt very lucky and grateful, and couldn’t believe that I had got this top-of-the-game job,” Pugh told The Telegraph. But once they started picking apart her looks, Pugh was not on board.
All the things that they were trying to change about me – whether it was my weight, my look, the shape of my face, the shape of my eyebrows – that was so not what I wanted to do, or the industry I wanted to work in. I’d thought the film business would be like [my experience of making] The Falling, but actually, this was what the top of the game looked like, and I felt I’d made a massive mistake.
Pugh eventually left the project, which never ended up seeing the light of day. Instead, she was cast just two weeks later in her breakout role in Lady Macbeth. “That made me fall back in love with cinema – the kind of cinema that was a space where you could be opinionated, and loud, and I’ve stuck by that,” Pugh said of the movie. “I think it’s far too easy for people in this industry to push you left and right. And I was lucky enough to discover when I was 19 what kind of a performer I wanted to be.”
This isn’t uncommon with young female stars who are often pushed to plastic surgery or dramatic weight loss. Bella Hadid recently opened up about her regret surrounding her nose job, while Pugh has been outspoken about how the media treats her own body on Instagram. Maybe this means that Hollywood is actually beginning to listen to stars and let people look how they look. A wild concept!