Florence Pugh learned some important lessons from her romance with Zach Braff that she is taking into her new relationship.
“I had to be public in the past because people were bullying me and bullying my partner,” the actress, 28, told British Vogue in an interview published on Wednesday, September 18. “Mine and Zach’s relationship was actually quite private until it was nasty, and I could see the toll that it was taking on him and us and our families.”
Pugh recalled how she “spoke out” about her romance with Braff, 49, adding, “I think for anyone I’m with, I want to protect them. It’s not nice knowing that people are saying the worst things I’ve ever read about someone that I love.”
Pugh found it “necessary” to defend Braff at the time. “I needed to talk about it,” she explained. “I think any relationship in this limelight is going to be stressed.”
Pugh and Braff — who have a 21-year age difference — started dating in 2019 after working together on the show film In the Time It Takes to Get There. After a birthday tribute to Braff resulted in online hate, Pugh called out those criticizing her relationship over the age difference.
“I’ve been wrestling with the idea for the past few days about whether I should do this video and then finally last night I thought, for my own peace of mind, I should,” she said in an April 2020 Instagram video, before reminding her followers that “being hateful is not trendy.”
Florence Pugh and Zach Braff. Jeff Spicer/Getty Images
“I’m 24 years old. I have been working since I was 17 years old. I have been earning money since I was 17 years old. I became an adult when I was 18 years old and I started paying taxes when I was 18 years old,” she continued. “I do not need you to tell me who I should and should not love, and I would never in my life ever, ever tell someone who they can and cannot love. It is not your place. And really it has nothing to do with you … The abuse that you throw at him is abuse that you throw at me.”
Braff later gushed about his girlfriend defending their romance. “She literally sat down, hit record on her phone and said that,” he recalled during an interview with MR PORTER’s digital magazine, The Journal in November 2020. “I thought: how could I possibly follow anything as intelligent and articulate as that? So, I chose not to.”
Florence Pugh, Zach Braff. Getty Images (2)
The former couple called it quits two years later. “We’ve been trying to do this separation without the world knowing, because it’s been a relationship that everybody has an opinion on,” Pugh said in an August 2022 Harper’s Bazaar cover story. “We just felt something like this would really do us the benefit of not having millions of people telling us how happy they are that we’re not together. So we’ve done that. I automatically get a lumpy throat when I talk about it.”
Pugh has since started dating someone new but she’s not giving too much away.
“I am [in a relationship]. OK, so something that I resonate with is that I believe that if magic is real, then it’s falling in love,“ she told British Vogue on Wednesday. “So there is someone. Yes. We are figuring what we actually are. And I think for the first time, I’m not allowing myself to go on a roller-coaster. I’m allowing myself to take time to let something evolve and let it be completely real to its core, as opposed to racing into that.”
She continued: “Falling is the most amazing feeling but unfortunately if that’s the only thing that you know in a relationship, then that’s the thing that you chase. That’s not gonna last.”