{"id":65213,"date":"2022-09-27T19:33:11","date_gmt":"2022-09-27T19:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=65213"},"modified":"2022-09-27T19:33:11","modified_gmt":"2022-09-27T19:33:11","slug":"florence-pugh-new-film-the-wonder","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/florence-pugh-new-film-the-wonder\/","title":{"rendered":"Florence Pugh’s New Role in \u2018The Wonder\u2019 Is One to Have on Your Radar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Florence Pugh (Carl Timpone\/BFA.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hot off the heels of her acclaimed performance as Alice in Don\u2019t Worry Darling<\/em><\/a>, Academy Award-nominated actress Florence Pugh<\/a> has yet another film coming out this year to get excited about. Pugh\u2019s debut Netflix original project, The Wonder,<\/em> comes out in November and is based on Emma Donoghue\u2019s 2016 novel of the same name, inspired by a chilling true story set in the\u00a019th<\/sup>-century.<\/p>\n

Pugh stars as the British nurse Lib Wright, who travels to visit a devout 11-year-old named Anna O\u2019Donnell, who claims to have been starving herself for months. The child asserts to have remained nourished simply through \u201cmanna from heaven,\u201d rather than any food in a famine-ravaged Ireland.<\/p>\n

Wright travels to monitor Anna\u2019s health alongside a skeptical journalist Will Byrne (Tom Burke), who both begin to formulate their own theories as to how the child is surviving, eventually revealing a serious case of child abuse. Harry Potter<\/em> actor Toby Jones and Belfast<\/em>\u2019s Ciar\u00e1n Hinds round out the core cast in the project directed by Oscar-winning Sebasti\u00e1n Lelio.<\/p>\n

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Florence Pugh in The Wonder (Cr. Courtesy of Netflix \u00a9 2022)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been traipsing around the Irish hills for the last week, and it\u2019s truly been a magnificent start to a beautiful and exciting film,\u201d Pugh told her 8.2 million Instagram<\/a> followers last August. \u201cWhat a story to get our teeth stuck into, what a crew to be working alongside and a fantastic director Sebasti\u00e1n Lelio to be leading us! This will be fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the author who brought us Room<\/em>, Donoghue told The Hollywood Reporter<\/em><\/a> of the inspiration behind the film. \u201cBack in the late ’90s, I came across one of these cases of a fasting girl,\u201d she said. \u201cAnytime from the 16th<\/sup> century through to the 20th<\/sup>, you would have a girl or a woman hit the headlines for apparently being able to live without food. You see this kind of recurrent cultural fantasy in Europe, British Isles, Canada, America, in different varieties of Christianity, or even not particularly in a religious setting\u2014just this idea, \u2018Imagine if a girl could live without food?\u2019”<\/p>\n

Lelio told the outlet, \u201cWhat I really loved about the story and about Emma\u2019s novel is that the nurse, Lib, Florence\u2019s character has to transcend reason in order to save herself and hopefully the girl from that narrative war in which she\u2019s immersed.\u201d He went on to explain, \u201cEveryone has a take. It\u2019s not about the girl anymore. It\u2019s about who controls the narrative, and I thought that was what really made it a story so resonant for these times.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Florence Pugh\u00a0 in The Wonder<\/em>. (Cr. Christopher Barr\/Netflix \u00a9 2022)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cFlorence Pugh, she got the script, and very quickly she was in,\u201d Lelio told the publication. \u201cI was over the moon.\u201d Gushing over Pugh\u2019s talent, Lelio admitted he knew they had a film when Pugh signed onto the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s great, she\u2019s a great actress,\u201d said Lelio. \u201cWhat she does in the film \u2013 the character, what she does \u2014 it\u2019s to say the least, morally complex. Florence has such magnetism that you walk by her side, on her side, despite the very extreme things she has to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pugh, who began her career starring in the 2017 adaptation of Lady Macbeth<\/em>, is returning to her Victorian thriller roots and has already received critical acclaim for her performance in The Wonder<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Florence Pugh as Lib Wright, K\u00edla Lord Cassidy as Anna O\u2019Donnell in The Wonder<\/em>. (Cr. Aidan Monaghan\/Netflix \u00a9 2022)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2023, Pugh will star in the film A Good Person<\/em> alongside Morgan Freeman and Molly Shannon, Oppenheimer <\/em>alongside Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, and Matt Damon, and Dune: Part Two<\/em> alongside Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet and Zendaya.<\/p>\n

The director said in a statement via Netflix, \u201cBringing the powerful novel\u00a0The Wonder<\/em>\u00a0by Emma Donoghue to the screen not only offers me the chance to portray the collision between reason and faith, individual and community, obedience and rebellion, but also to explore my own interpretation of what a \u2018period\u2019 film can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wonder<\/em> is slated to hit select theaters November 2, before debuting on Netflix on November 16.<\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA\u2019s Fall issue<\/a>\u00a0featuring cover star Nicola Peltz Beckham:<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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