Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova has not only become so popular and distinctive in her own right that nobody, either in or out of the MCU, even bothers to identify her as “Black Widow” anymore—because everybody already knows who “Yelena” is, like Cher—but that Marvel Cinematic Universe head honcho Kevin Feige has been going around lately saying that she’s the “anchor” of Marvel’s latest big cinematic push, Avengers: Doomsday. But would the character become such a quick a fan favorite if she was delivering her dry one-liners in Pugh’s own Oxford-born English accent? Because that, apparently, was the original plan.
This is per Pugh herself, who recounted the story while participating in Vanity Fair‘s Scene Selection feature, where actors watch (get this) a selection of scenes from throughout their careers. Pugh, unsurprisingly, had a lot to say about 2021’s Black Widow, her first appearance as the character, including her anxieties about nailing the film’s stunts properly, and her continuing friendship with star Scarlett Johansson. But the most interesting bit comes when she talks about finding Yelena’s voice, which she was originally delivering during rehearsals in a British accent, as per what was apparently the initial plan for the film. The only problem: “It sounded so boring. I was like, ugh, this girl. She’s going to be miserable.”
Pugh says she started screwing around with a Russian accent while at home, cooking dinner, and the character began to click for her. “She suddenly became funny, and dry, and witty, and sarcastic.” Because the Marvel machine is what it is, Pugh notes that switching the accents was not as simple as working things out with Black Widow director Cate Shortland; the pair actually had to tape a few videos of her speaking with the new voice to send off to Feige and his braintrust, but the rest is “Now she’s so popular she gets dropped in a Spider-Man movie to build up fan excitement” history.
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