Hawkeye’s Hilarious Exchange Between Yelena and Kate Came From Surprising Improv Moment

The fifth episode of Hawkeye is now streaming on Disney+, and it featured an amazing scene between Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). In the episode, “Ronin,” Yelena breaks into Kate’s apartment and makes macaroni and cheese, which they eat over an intense conversation about Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner). During the scene, Yelena douses her meal with sriracha. Turns out, Pugh’s real-life love of hot sauce led to a great improvised moment. 

“There was obviously a script and it was planned, and we knew we wanted Kate to kind of turn and throw something at Yelena. At first, we were just looking around the set and there was one of those lucky cats from Chinatown. So, it was going to be that at one point, but then there was this hot sauce bottle, and we loved that,” director Bertie explained to BuzzFeed. “Then, Florence was like, ‘Oh, well, this hot sauce now needs to go all over the mac and cheese.’ Florence is hugely into hot sauce, but Hailee not so much. So, the whole thing where Yelena basically says, ‘Are you done? Can I go crazy?’ That was not planned.”

Bertie continued, “As an actor, you have to know you’re up for many takes, and we kept wondering how much hot sauce could Florence take? She went there for real. At one point, we were like, ‘Are you sure you’re good?’ And Florence was like, ‘I’m in. I am in it. Don’t you worry.’”

Steinfeld recently spoke with Cosmopolitan about getting along with Pugh and noted that they had similar energy. 

“Oh, one hundred percent. I honestly felt that right away. And I hope to god she’d say the same thing. Jeez. Now that I say it, I’m like, ‘I knew right from the start!’ And what if she was like, ‘This girl?’ No, I think we just had similar energy,” Steinfeld said. “We had a moment together where we were shooting and something went wrong. There was no recovering from it. I started laughing so hard that somebody thought I was crying-I don’t know what that says about my laugh-and I just remember a flood of people rushing in and being like, ‘Is everyone okay?’ And I’m literally facedown on the ground, just hysterically laughing. Mind you, we were in a scene that was in no way, shape, or form meant to be at all funny. We really did have a wonderful time together.”

The finale of Hawkeye will drop on Disney+ on December 22nd.