Florence Pugh Pinpoints Why People Are Upset Over Zach Braff Relationship

Black Widow star Florence Pugh thinks she knows why people are upset about her relationship with former Scrubs star Zach Braff, and it has more to do than their age difference. Pugh, who earned her first Oscar nomination for Little Women, is 25, and Braff is 46. The couple has been dating since at least April 2019, and have often responded to criticism of their 21-year age difference.

In a new interview with The Sunday Times, Pugh suggested that one part of the uproar is that Braff is not who fans expect her to date. “I think it bugs people that it’s not who they expected,” Pugh said, via Yahoo Entertainment. The Midsommar star agreed that people wish she dated someone like her Little Women co-star, Timothee Chalamet, 25. “Exactly. Exactly,” Pugh told the Times. “But it’s my life and I’m not doing anything to please people or to make it a better headline or story. I want to also be a person!”

Since photos of Braff and Pugh together surfaced in April 2019, the couple had tried to keep their relationship out of the spotlight. This did not stop Instagram users from barraging Pugh’s Instagram page with criticism though. It got to a point in April 2020 that Pugh was inspired to post a long video in which she told people she is old enough to make up her own mind on who to love.

“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. It has nothing to do with you,” she said in the video. “The abuse that you throw at him is abuse that you’re throwing at me, and I don’t want those followers… I don’t want that on my page. It’s embarrassing, it’s sad and I don’t know when cyberbullying became trendy.”

Since then, the two have discussed their relationship more often and both have appeared on each other’s Instagram pages. “I would have felt blessed to have smiled with your [sic] for one night. I can’t believe I get to giggle with you every day,” Braff wrote in January to mark Pugh’s birthday. “What a pleasure it is to know you. What a gift to the world it was that you were born.”

In her new Times interview, Pugh said she thought it was “so weird” to see people go to her Instagram page just to “s— on” it. “That’s so not my nature — to go and bully for the sake of bullying,” Pugh said. “It’s such an odd thing that we’ve become OK with in the past 10 years of social media. The thing is, people want Instagram to be a nicer place, they want to see nice things. They want to be inspired and they want to be happy. I don’t mind you not liking me, that’s absolutely fine. In which case don’t follow me.”

Pugh stars in Marvel’s Black Widow as Yelena Belova, opposite Scarlett Johansson. She will also be playing the character in the Disney+ series Hawkeye. Black Widow hits theaters on July 9. Pugh also recently filmed the upcoming Don’t Worry Darling, co-starring Harry Styles and directed by Olivia Wilde.