Florence Pugh appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Monday night and revealed that fans of her Marvel character, Yelena Belova, really have Tom Holland to thank for her appearance in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.” “This all happened because of Tom,” said Pugh. He, on the red carpet of his previous movie, when someone said, ‘Who do you want to be in the next movie with?… 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.” Pugh has played the character of Yelena since 2021 when she appeared in “Black Widow,” and has since reprised the role for 2025’s “Thunderbolts*” and 2026’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.” Within the MCU, Yelena is known as an assassin and the successor to the Black Widow title. It ranks behind 2009’s “Avatar” ($2.92 billion) and 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” ($2.88 billion).
Scheduled to release in theaters on Dec. 18, Pugh is also set to start as Princess Irulan Corrino once again in “Dune: Part Three” from director Denis Villeneuve. That same day, theatergoers will once again get to see her reprise her role as Yelena in the highly anticipated “Avengers: Doomsday,” the Anthony and Joe Russo-directed follow-up to 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.”
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