Florence Pugh has said she will not let anyone silence her, speaking out in a new interview for Elle's Women in Hollywood issue about Instagram restricting a post she shared on the alleged sexual assault case at Cornell University, according to Fashion Times and Reality Tea. "Don't even try. That's just going to add fuel to the fire," she told Elle.
Pugh first posted about the case in September, after a former Cornell University student filed a civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged and sexually assaulted at a Chi Phi fraternity house party in October 2024. Seven men are accused in the lawsuit, and the allegations have not been proven in court, with some of the accused having denied wrongdoing. Pugh said at the time that she felt enraged by the case and wanted to use her platform to speak out, according to the reports.
Shortly after her first post, Instagram placed a sensitive-content warning over it, and Pugh shared a second post saying the platform had blocked her message from reaching the right people. According to Reality Tea, Meta told TMZ that the post was initially flagged under its rules on sexual violence content and that the restriction was lifted after a review. Pugh discussed the episode again on The View on 30 September, saying Instagram had censored her when she tried to talk about the case.
The Elle interview also covers how Pugh now handles behaviour on film sets. She told the magazine she has learned to lead productions and will no longer accept rudeness or misogyny from the people around her, summing up her ground rules as: "Show up on time, don't be rude, don't be a misogynist," according to Fashion Times. She said growing confidence from her recent work has sharpened her sense of what she will and will not accept.
The interview lands during one of the busiest stretches of her career. Her seven-episode Netflix series East of Eden, which she also executive produced, premiered on 1 October, according to Fiction Horizon, and she is set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three, both reported to open on 18 December, as well as Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The photograph above is from the premiere of In The Shadows at the BFI London Film Festival on 9 October 2026, not from the Elle interview.