Black Widow sisters: Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh are just as tight off-screen – so when can we expect that Instagram cooking collab?

Jul 25 , 2021

Florence Pugh and Scarlett Johansson’s chemistry even transcends when they’re not on set. Photo: Entertainment Tonight/Youtube

In Johansson’s first solo Marvel film – now on Disney + – Oscar-nominated Midsommar actress Pugh plays Natasha Romanoff’s younger secret agent, Yelena Belova

Johansson was joined by Elizabeth Olsen in Avengers: Age of Ultron and had her moments with Brie Larson, and Pugh recalls watching her in Iron Man 2

Sisters can’t escape unwanted hand-me-downs, not even in a Marvel superhero movie. At least Florence Pugh scored an iconic one.

The globetrotting spy thriller Black Widow (in theatres and on Disney+ via Premier Access) finally gives Scarlett Johansson’s long-time Avenger her first solo film and also unleashes Natasha Romanoff’s younger secret agent “sibling” Yelena Belova into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After the estranged spies reunite – in a raucous fight that destroys the decor of a Budapest, Hungary, flat – Belova spends much of the film giving Romanoff a hard time about her signature landing pose, the same one that captured pop culture’s attention in 2010’s Iron Man 2.

Natasha Romanoff’s iconic “spider” pose caught our attention in Iron Man 2. Photo: @redofpendragon/Twitter

At the time, Johansson, 36, loved the idea of something feminine and “kind of spidery” to match all the super-dudes’ poses. “I had no idea we would be creating something that would have such a legacy, obviously. I was just hoping that I would still have a job,” she recalls.

“It’s such an image singed into all of our brains. [But] I, just like any younger sister, like to tease where it’s easy to tease,” adds Pugh, 25. The ongoing joke then became part of Black Widow, and screenwriter Eric Pearson had the idea that Belova should do the move, too.

Yelena Belova can also been seen doing the iconic landing pose in the Black Widow film. Photo: @highchaelisa/Twitter

Pugh had immediate regrets: “I was laughing at myself thinking I’ve spent so much of this film prodding and being like, ‘Hah!’ and then I had to have a whole lesson on how to do it properly. It’s hard! You’ve got to get it all right otherwise it doesn’t look perfect.”

The two Oscar-nominated actresses formed a sisterly bond making Black Widow that was about much more than cool fighting stances. With her long-time character’s fate sealed in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, Johansson passes the electroshock baton to Pugh as a heroic persona going forward in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Pugh will next appear in the Disney+ TV show Hawkeye, premiering later this year.) The movie also embraces womanhood like no other Marvel project before it, from tackling multigenerational trauma and oppression to simply giving heroines conversations with each other.

A behind the scenes shot of Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh in Black Widow. Photo: @BestfScarlett/Twitter

Sadly, the latter is something that Johansson hasn’t experienced much playing in the MCU sandbox. As an actress, she had “small beats of stuff” with Brie Larson and “spent a lot of time in a dusty ditch” with Danai Gurira in the last two Avengers films. Before that, Elizabeth Olsen joining her on 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron was “super-refreshing”, Johansson says, noting that in making 2012’s first Avengers movie, she and Cobie Smulders “clung to each other a lot”.

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