Movies - TV
One Of Hawkeye’s Funniest Scenes Was Improvised By Florence Pugh
By JOE ROBERTS
Improv has been essential in shaping the comedic sensibilities of the MCU, and one notable instance of improvisation came from Florence Pugh in the Disney+ series, "Hawkeye."
Back in 2021, directors Amber Templemore-Finlayson and Katie Ellwood spoke with Buzzfeed about their time filming for "Hawkeye," where they saw actors doing lots of improvisation.
Ellwood shared that a new joke had been added to the script for a scene in episode five, in which Pugh’s character, Yelena Belova, breaks into Kate Bishop's apartment.
The joke came from a moment of improvisation by Pugh during the scene’s rehearsal, after she realized the lack of cutlery props in the apartment set.
Ellwood told Buzzfeed, "Florence was like, 'I'll need to get some implements. So, we'll go over here.' She picked it up and just went, 'There's one fork! There's only one fork!'"
According to the director, "The props people were searching around for other forks, but they only had plastic ones, so it became the one proper cutlery fork and one plastic fork."
Following this realization, the actors were encouraged to work it into the script. "It was perfect and [...] we came out with this hilarious Yelena and Kate scene," Ellwood said.
In the end, the scene sees Black Widow’s sister, Yelena, walk over to a drawer and take out a fork, before saying, "You have one fork?" to which Kate replies, "I'm one person."
The fork scene speaks to the way in which MCU humor can work well when it's supporting the story and characters rather than distracting from them.