Florence Pugh Reflects on Defending Her Relationship With Zach Braff

Florence Pugh doesn’t regret defending her three-year relationship with ex Zach Braff.

“With relationships and with romance in this world, it doesn’t matter how much you speak on it or how little you speak on it, people don’t care. They want a story; they want a reality show,” Pugh said during the Monday, November 10, episode of “The Louis Theroux Podcast.”

“It doesn’t really matter how much you say you love someone or how much they make you happy,” she continued of their 21-year age gap relationship, which lasted from 2019 to 2022. “If they don’t like them and it doesn’t fit that image that they want of you, they don’t care. And I think that hurt me.”

Pugh acknowledged that she was in a relationship that was highly and publicly criticized, adding that she “stood” up for their romance regardless.

“Yes. And I stood up for it, and I stood up for him and I stood up for me just being allowed to do whatever the f**k I wanted to do, and that kind of did actually change a few people’s minds,” she explained. “And I had a few people in the public eye reach out to me and say I didn’t think of it like that, and thank you for saying that.”

Pugh also shared that she believes her growing fame has impacted how people receive and perceive her and her personal life.

“And also since then I’ve got bigger, I’ve become a different star. People will probably want to know a little bit more,” she added. “I think you have to just ask yourself, the more you expose, the more you’re allowing people to comment on it. And if they don’t know, they can’t really comment on it.”

Pugh went on to add that she has no regrets regarding how she chose to handle the situation, saying that she will “always defend people that I love.”

“I will always stand up for them,” she said. “I’ll always make sure that if there needs to be a reset and there needs to be a bit of a smack on the wrist, I will do that because it’s not fair that so much of your life gets to have jabs.”

Pugh specifically pointed to the internet and social media as a major part of the problem, adding that the online discourse resulted in an “insane amount of abuse being hurled at my relationship just because there was an age gap.

“And it got to the point where it was just really horrible to see someone that you are with receiving that,” she added.

Pugh and Braff were first romantically linked in April 2019, when they were spotted holding hands in New York City — the same month Pugh starred in Braff’s short film In the Time It Takes to Get There.

On April 6, 2020, Pugh celebrated Braff’s 45th birthday via social media. Three days later, she responded to the waterfall of comments she received on the post denigrating the pair’s relationship.

“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,” the Midsommar actress explained in a video. “I have never been an Instagram page that likes the toxic vibe. I have only been an Instagram page that tries to bring some light and tries to be positive and tries to make people smile. I will not allow [bullying] on my page. I’m not about that. It makes me upset. It makes me sad during this time — when we really all need to be together, we need to be supporting one another, we need to be loving one another. The world is aching and the world is dying and a few of you decided to bully for no reason.”

She added: “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. 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.”

“The Louis Theroux Podcast” is available on Spotify now.