Florence Pugh, 27, on age gap with ex Zach Braff, 47: ‘People didn’t like it’
Florence Pugh is aware that people were not always rooting for her relationship with now-ex Zach Braff to succeed given its 21-year age gap.
“We weren’t in anyone’s faces. It was just that people didn’t like it,” the “Don’t Worry Darling” star told Vogue for their January 2023 cover story.
“They imagined me with someone younger and someone in blockbusters.”
Pugh explained how if she had dated someone in the entertainment industry that was her own age, the romance could have perhaps been more suitable for tabloid fodder.
“I think young relationships in Hollywood are so easily twisted because they add to the gossip sites,” she said. “It’s exciting to watch. And I think I was in a relationship that didn’t do any of that.”
Pugh, 27, met Braff, 47, through a mutual friend and the pair grew closer after he casted her in a semi-sponsored short film he was making for Adobe. They were first spotted out publicly together in New York City in April 2019.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Midsommar” star was there for the “Scrubs” alum amid some personal hardships, including the loss of his best friend Nick Cordero, due to the virus, and the deaths of his father and sister.
Pugh told Vogue she remembers Cordero as someone who “made everyone feel good” and said the late Broadway star was “a massive part” of including her in their friendship group.
However, by August 2022, the “Lady MacBeth” stat confirmed that she and Braff had quietly called it quits earlier that year.
“We’ve been trying to do this separation without the world knowing, because it’s been a relationship that everybody has an opinion on,” she told Harper’s Bazaar’s at the time.
“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.”
Still, there is a lot of love and mutual respect left for each other.
Braff was interviewed for Pugh’s Vogue cover story, and he raved to the publication about his ex’s acting chops.
“I quite simply think she’s one of the greatest actors of her generation,” the filmmaker said.
“She’s just magnetic. You cannot take your eyes off of her. And it’s not just her beauty and it’s not just her acting ability, it’s that thing, that magic thing that transcends the screen, where anyone and everyone goes: I want to see whatever this person does.”
Braff also recently showed his support for Pugh on her birthday earlier this month, writing in a post on social media, “Happy birthday, legend.”
The former couple have not been romantically linked to anyone else since their split.
