Florence Pugh Was “So Nervous” to Release ‘East of Eden’ and Still Hasn’t Read the Reviews: “It Was Too Much With This One”

East of Eden has quickly become a major hit on Netflix following its release last month, but Florence Pugh isn’t basking in the glow.

“I can’t look at it, I can’t,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at a FYC event for the series on Friday, of how the public and critical reaction has felt. “It was too much with this one. The process of making this was so long and it had so many of my sticky fingerprints all over it — I was so nervous to release it because I was just going to be so sad if people didn’t understand it or didn’t like it. It was so much of my life and so much of me as a performer that I put into it that I just didn’t want to look. So I’m glad I didn’t but apparently people like it!”

Pugh stars in and executive produced, the limited series, an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel. She appears alongside Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist, with Zoe Kazan serving as writer and co-showrunner.

“It’s very overwhelming,” Kazan said of the show’s success. “The critics absolutely panned this book and it found this enormous popular audience, so there’s part of me that believed and knew there was an audience out there for this, but this is a period piece and it’s very specific and from this very literary source. I just feel so lucky and so grateful and relieved that the people who want this are finding it.”

Pugh also noted that the experience made her want to “keep producing, I want to keep being a part of projects from the beginning. I really feel like the payoff is so much deeper and so much more profound.”

“You really feel like you’ve given a slice of your DNA over, and to watch the thing come together in front of your eyes and to see ideas that you’ve had come to fruition — there’s no better feeling when the way that you want to work and the way that you want people to feel is actually being shown on the set that you’ve helped design,” she added. “It’s such a beautiful place to make the work feel better and I want to keep doing it.”