Despite their split last year, Zach Braff and Florence Pugh appear to remain on good terms, with the latter set to star in Braff’s upcoming film A Good Person. As it turns out, Pugh as a person served as a big inspiration for Braff’s latest directorial effort.
The Scrubs star turned-filmmaker shared how he knew that Pugh was meant for the role from the second his idea for the film materialized, and given the challenging nature of the film, it wasn’t just for any old actor. He told Entertainment Tonight:
“She’s a next-level actress. I mean, she’s just unbelievable and what I was writing was gonna be really challenging. It wasn’t for your average actors – I couldn’t have written the part for myself. I wanted to write something for her and I had this image in my mind of that diner booth scene and I thought of Florence Pugh opposite some legend that everyone’s talking about.”
That legend, of course, ended up being Morgan Freeman, with whom Braff has previously worked with on one of his previous directorial efforts, Going In Style, in which Freeman and a pair of other aging juggernauts of the film industry (Michael Caine and Alan Arkin) plan a bank heist.
Even though they broke up, Braff and Pugh appear to still hold each other in the highest regard, continuing to work together despite their differences. They’ve even occasionally gotten a little flirtatious with each other on social media.
A Good Person arrives in theaters in just a few days time, on March 24, 2023.