In a new interview, Florence Pugh recalls being body-shamed by studio executives when she 19. The English actor is one of the most promising young talents working in Hollywood today. Last year, she made her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as Yelena Belova in Black Widow and reprised the role for the Disney+ series Hawkeye. Pugh's latest project is the Netflix film, The Wonder, in which she plays a nurse summoned to rural Ireland during the 1860s to watch over an 11-year-old girl who hasn't eaten in months.

In 2014, Pugh made her feature film debut in the psychological drama, The Falling, in which she played a precocious teenager opposite Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams. Pugh's performance was enough for her to begin courting interest in other roles, including the Fox sitcom Studio City. Pugh accepted a lead role in the series as a rising pop star alongside Eric McCormack as her father. While the pilot was not picked up by Fox (and the sitcom has mostly been forgotten), the casting process for Studio City was quite memorable for Pugh, mainly due to some ridiculous feedback she received from studio executives.

During a recent interview with The Telegraph promoting The Wonder, Pugh reflected on being cast in Studio City, which, at the time, was a game-changer for her career. Soon after she was selected for the role, Pugh says she was body-shamed by studio executives who requested she change aspects of her physical appearance, including her weight, face, and eyebrows. This caused her to feel like she made a "massive mistake" by becoming an actor. Read what Pugh shared below:

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.
How Studio City Changed Florence Pugh's Career


Fox ultimately passing on Studio City ended up significantly benefiting Pugh's career. Afterward, she returned home to England, and just two weeks later, Pugh landed her breakthrough role in Lady Macbeth, for which she won a British Independent Film Award. Pugh didn't explode internationally until 2019 with a trio of exceptional performances as the professional wrestler Paige in Fighting with My Family, the lead role in Ari Aster's A24 horror film Midsommar, and Amy March in Greta Gerwig's Little Women, the last of which earned her an Academy Award nomination.

Now, Pugh is an MCU star and has joined the ensemble cast of Marvel's Thunderbolts movie. She will increase her profile with roles in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two as Princess Irulan. If Fox picked up the failed sitcom Studio City to series, Florence Pugh would have likely made a long-term commitment to the series, which would have prevented her from taking on her breakthrough role and drastically changed her career trajectory.