Black Widow: Florence Pugh Helped Make Hilarious Helicopter Sequence

Florence Pugh helped make one of the funniest sequences in Black Widow. Polygon and Little White Lies reported that the helicopter joke came from the director and her stars pushing back on a period joke in the script. Nicole Holofcener, director of Walking and Talking, came in to craft the lines. Once they saw the rewrites, director Cate Shortland decided that Pugh just had to be the one to deliver the zinger at David Harbour's Red Guardian. He made that joke about it being "that time of the month" and Scarlett Johansson, Pugh, and Shortland wanted to interrogate that a bit. Funny enough, the rest of Black Widow features a whole lot of relitigating things from Natasha's previous adventures as an Avenger. Early returns seem to indicate that audiences were receptive to it. Here's what Shortland had to say.

"So Eric, who is our writer, had written a joke about women being in bad moods because they have their period," Shortland explained. "And I remember Florence and Scarlett and I reading it and just being like, 'Oh, my God, this is ridiculous.'"

"I love it," Shortland continued. "Because it's like, if you're gonna make that joke, I'm gonna unleash Florence Pugh on you. She's gonna Yelena you. It's one of my favorite moments in the film."

In another interview, Shortland explained how excited Marvel Studios was to be expanding this universe through Black Widow and the Disney+ shows.

"I think what's exciting is this whole legion of new characters is going to be unleashed," Shortland said. "And I think what's really exciting too, is there's an ambiguity about those characters. So, whereas the, say, original legion was fairly black and white, I think some of these characters who are going to come to the fore have got a darkness in them."

"And that's interesting, because that's not something that we're used to seeing as well. In some ways, it's more complex. Some of the characters are more difficult. But I think what people want is change," she added. "I don't think we can keep watching the same thing. And I think Kevin [Feige] is very aware of that, I think he not only is switching it up with cultures and adding different voices, [but] what he's also doing is adding different perspectives on the world."

Do you think Yelena will be a hero by the time we see her next? Let us know down in the comments!