David Harbour Discusses The Complex Relationship of Red Guardian and Yelena in THUNDERBOLTS

Red Guardian actor David Harbour recently opened up about Marvel’s Thunderbolts movie, specifically in regard to the complex relationship between his character Red Guardian and Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova.

The actor previously talked about the pair’s “funny and complex” relationship, but in a recent interview with ScreenRant, Harbour offered some additional insight, saying:

"So they have a lot of unexplored history. There's a lot of details that the director, Jake, has gone into the great care of what their life was like in the Midwest when they were doing all that spy stuff. And then, a lot of that comes up in really fun, interesting, beautiful ways, which, like in the Black Widow movie came up with that song, American Pie. And there's just a lot of complexity between me and Florence's character, which I love.

"And also they're two people that... she can't stand him, but she needs someone because she's incomplete in a certain way that he may be able to help her with. I think that's always so beautiful. Because I feel like our relationships are always so... Sometimes we don't get to choose the people that complete us. The people that we really need. I think that they exemplify that in their own way. It will be fun to bring that to life in the movie."

Harbour previously talked about Red Guardian’s emotional relationship with Yelena, saying: "I mean, I think we were gonna go and then I think they did want the opportunity to change some stuff. The interesting thing about Marvel that's so great about them is they do rework stuff even big productions. Like Black Widow, the entire third act was reworked as we were shooting which is incredible and so they just want that freedom. The script we have is really tight and really great and our director Jake [Schreier] thinks it's great but they just want the freedom. They don't want to be stuck in the middle of a shoot and then having to go like you know we can't rewrite this."

Harbour continued: "I started working on it already and it's like phenomenal. Again, it's hard to these projects because I sound like such a dumb idiot so all I say is like that's a great script. But it's true. I'm blessed to work with the Duffers, who write some of the greatest scripts on television and this, you know, these Marvel writers are writing incredible epic stories and they're letting the Red Guardian do stuff that he's never done before. That relationship with Yelena, we get to go into that more, and it's funny and satisfying in a real emotional way. Yeah, I'm just really blessed with these two amazing projects that aren't shooting."

Thunderbolts also stars Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, Julie Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Wyatt Russell as US Agent, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster, Harrison Ford, who is taking on the role of General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, who is going to be President of the United States in Captain America: New World Order. Ayo Edebiri also joined the cast in an undisclosed role, and Steven Yuen will play The Sentry.

We don’t know much about what the story for Thunderbolts will entail, but we do know that Bucky Barnes is going to be leading the team in the movie. That detail was revealed by Kevin Feige.

Thunderbolts is currently slated to hit theaters on July 25, 2025.