Florence Pugh has credited Tom Holland with securing her cameo in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
The British actress returns as Marvel superhero Yelena Belova in Holland’s fourth solo Spider-Man outing, appearing briefly in a comedic scene to give Peter Parker advice and information from her unusual “office” in a Russian bathhouse in New York.
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During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday night, Pugh revealed that Holland “started the ball rolling” with her Spider-Man role when he named her character in an interview five years ago.
“You know this all happened because of Tom?” she began. “Years ago, when I had just kind of started my relationship with Marvel and Black Widow had come out (in 2021) and my (character) Yelena wasn’t as obviously big as all of the other big superheroes, he, on the red carpet of his previous movie, when someone said, ‘Who do you want to do the next movie with? Do you want it to be with, like, Thor?’ I don’t remember the superheroes (named in the interview), but they were all massive superheroes, and he said, ‘No, actually, I want to do it with Florence Pugh, who plays Yelena.’
“So because of that, fans were then so excited about the idea of it and that started the ball rolling so thanks to Tom. Thank you, Tom.”
Pugh made her debut as Yelena in 2021’s Black Widow and has since reprised the role in the 2021 Disney+ TV show Hawkeye and the 2025 movie Thunderbolts. She will return later this year in Avengers: Doomsday.
Elsewhere in the interview, the Little Women actress joked that she did a “fair bit of riffing on the day” of her cameo scene, and noted that it was hard to keep the details a secret.
“No one would believe me that I was in a hot tub. I was in a bath with Tom all day. I did it!” she added.
In addition to Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday, Pugh also stars in the Netflix miniseries East of Eden and the upcoming sci-fi blockbuster Dune: Part Three this year.
