Florence Pugh Says She Was Not “Scared” to Show Support for Palestine: “I Don’t Know Why It Took So Long for People to Actually Feel Sympathy”

Florence Pugh is opening up about why she was not “scared” to show support for Palestine.

In a cover story for Vanity Fair, the Oscar-nominated actress estimated she lost hundreds of thousands of social media followers after voicing her opinion on the topic. Last September, Pugh attended the Together for Palestine event, where she said onstage, “Silence in the face of such suffering is not neutrality, it is complicity, and empathy should not be this hard and it should have never been this hard.”

“I don’t know why it took so long for people to start talking and for people to actually feel sympathy,” the East of Eden star told Vanity Fair. “But no, I was never scared of it,” she added of voicing her support.

The actress also noted that “weirdly, because so many people actively weren’t, that made me even more confused — and kind of probably even more in the right to talk about it.” The outlet highlighted that Pugh’s team never “advised her to keep quiet on the subject,” and she was thankful for those who helped her attend the event as it conflicted with the Avengers: Doomsday production schedule.

“It’s still happening, though,” Pugh said. “Babies are still dying. Mothers are still in pain. It’s really horrible to be watching such pain when so much of our lives just seem to be moving forward. I think that’s what I’ve found so difficult about social media as well: How can I say I’m having a really good time when literally one scroll up, I’m looking at a baby that’s motherless and fatherless?”

Pugh is gearing up for the release of Netflix’s East of Eden adaptation, which releases on Oct. 1. She’s also set to star in Avengers: Doomsday for Marvel on Dec. 18, the same day Dune: Part Three, another project she’ll appear in, hits theaters.