Zach Braff says he wanted to ‘base’ latest project around Florence Pugh
After all, Braff has said he always had Florence Pugh in mind for his latest film, A Good Person, and wanted to “base” it around his former partner.
The 47-year-old actor-filmmaker has written and directed the upcoming movie, which stars Pugh, 27, and examines the impact of the opioid crisis in America.
Speaking to the PA news agency on the red carpet at the UK premiere of A Good Person on Wednesday, Braff said: “That was part of the initial inspiration for the film, writing with Florence.
“And I’ve been writing during the pandemic and there are a couple of subjects I wanted to write about and I wanted to build it around Florence.”
Braff and Pugh were first romantically linked in 2019, but Pugh, who previously defended the couple’s 21-year age difference, confirmed they were no longer in a relationship last year.
Braff, the star of TV medical comedy Scrubs, also explained how he drew on his own experiences of grief to write the film, which follows Allison whose life falls apart after she survives a car accident that kills her fiancé and sister has.
“It was the pandemic, and it was time to write something, and my own experience of grief is kind of a fizz, and that’s what I wanted to write about,” he said.
“It was just like that in front of me and that seemed logical to me.”
Meanwhile, Pugh, who also produced the film, praised Braff’s writing style, telling the PA: “He’s very, very good at writing incredibly serious life situations while collaborating with some amazingly human, hilarious one-liners and I think that’s how we live .
“We go through life with dark things to face and laugh with our family or friends at the same time.
“It’s human to find humor even in the darkest of times.”
The actress also opened up about the prep work she did to portray the role of Allison, who becomes addicted to prescription drugs.
“We talked to people, we did a lot of research and really tried to make it as authentic and real and as human as possible,” she said.
Pugh added: “The mental preparation is asking and speaking and making sure you’re in the right conversations, making sure you’re taking notes, understanding how people get into these situations, like it’s not black and is white and this can happen to anyone.
“And actually it has more to do with physicality, which I felt was necessary to study how it hurts, how it hurts the body every single day. So I took studying that very seriously.”
A Good Person is scheduled for release on March 24th.