Florence Pugh Says She’s Empowered by Her Film With Andrew Garfield

Florence Pugh has reflected on how rewarding an experience it was to create her new film We Live In Time alongside Andrew Garfield.

Pugh, 28, took to social media on Sunday, October 20, to praise several elements of making the film, which centers on a love story that takes a tragic turn, including her onscreen efforts with Garfield, 41.

“Thank you Andrew. I’ll forever be empowered by what we created together and the performer you made me want to be each day,” Pugh wrote in an Instagram post that detailed her fondness for the film. She also detailed how rare an opportunity it was to portray Almut, one of the film’s two leads.

“I’ve been desperate for a role like this for a few years. A woman who is current and relatable and going through all of the conversations modern women are going through daily,” Pugh wrote. “Performing Nick Paynes script on John Crowley’s sets has to be one of my highlights of my career.”

The gushing post accompanied a series of photos including a promotional poster for the film, Pugh rocking a shaved head, behind-the-scenes makeup and wardrobe highlights and a snap of Garfield grinning under an umbrella between takes.

Pugh’s tribute comes after Garfield revealed earlier this month that he and Pugh were extremely committed to doing their characters’ justice on the big screen.

During the October 5 episode of the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, hosted by Josh Horowitz, Garfield revealed that the pair missed hearing ‘cut’ while filming a sex scene together.

“We do the first take of this very intimate, passionate sex scene,” he said during the recording. “And it’s a closed set, which means it’s only me and Florence in a room together and the camera operator — who is our DP — a very lovely man called Stewart.”

Garfield continued, “The scene becomes passionate and we choreographed it. And we get into it — as it were — and we go a little bit further than we were meant to just because we never heard ‘cut’ and it’s feeling safe and we’re like, ‘OK, we’ll go to the next thing and the next thing, we’ll let this progress.”

The Never Let Me Go actor then explained how he “telepathically” realized that filming should have stopped, telling Horowitz, “I look up, and in the corner is Stewart and our boom operator. Stewart has the camera by his side and he’s turned into the wall.”

We Live In Time charts a decade-long love story between Tobias, played by Garfield, and Pugh’s Almut. A car accident brings the couple together before a series of obstacles sets them on a less-than-perfect path that sees them navigating parenthood and a medical diagnosis.

For his part, Garfield has also acknowledged how special a project the film was, telling reporters at the San Sebastian Film Festival in September, “I read [the script], I was in deep contemplation of the meaning of life. I was thinking about life, death, love, meaning, time. … standing at the age of 39 and 40, kind of a mid-life crisis, looking forward, looking backward, looking exactly where I am, and thinking, ‘What now?’ This script arrived, and it was as if I had written it from that place. These things, there’s gotta be something to it, something universal in this story.”