Zach Braff on making his first film in 5 years, overcoming tragedy, and working with the 'flawless' Florence Pugh
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It's been over five years since Zach Braff last helmed a feature film, 2017's Going in Style, and a lot has changed for the director-writer-actor since then. In close succession, Braff lost his father, his sister, and two friends, one of whom died of COVID-19. And it's with all this in mind that he set out to write and direct his upcoming drama, A Good Person.
"I was just overcome with not only experiencing grief myself, but experiencing how the people closest to the grief were able to stand back up after the tragedy," he says. "And so that's what I really wanted to write about." The Garden State award winner only goes through the "all-encompassing" task of both scripting and directing a film when "something really, truly, genuinely interests" him, he says.
He didn't want to approach grief in a purely maudlin way. "Some of it is heartbreaking, but I also wanted to write about it with my own style, which is to find the humor in it all," Braff says. "I have a very funny family, and we always find a way to laugh our way through things, even the painful things." His goal, he tells EW, was to approach the topic like James L. Brooks did with 1983's Terms of Endearment.
Jeong Park / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Florence Pugh as Allison in 'A Good Person'
In A Good Person, Allison (Florence Pugh) is a young woman with a bright future, a wonderful fiancé, a blossoming career, and supportive family and friends. But her world crumbles in the blink of an eye when she survives an unimaginable tragedy and emerges from recovery with an opioid addiction and unresolved grief. In the following years, it is the unlikely friendship she forms with her would-be father-in-law (Morgan Freeman) that gives her a fighting chance to put herself back together and move forward with her life. Molly Shannon, Chinaza Uche, and Celeste O'Connor co-star.
Braff first got to work with his leading lady when he directed her in a short film, 2019's In the Time It Takes to Get There, and from there he knew he wanted to write another part for Pugh. "It was only a three-day shoot, but we had an incredible time making that together," he says of the short. "And actually, the incredible cinematographer who shot A Good Person, Mauro Fiore, shot the short. So we had this sort of three-person dream team, and I really said I want to make something with Florence, and I wrote [A Good Person] with her in mind."
Pugh and Braff also started dating in 2019, but quietly ended their relationship earlier this year. The duo have nothing but high praise for their work together, though. Pugh previously said of the film, "The movie that we made together genuinely was probably one of my most favorite experiences. It felt like a very natural and easy thing to do."
Braff, in turn, tells EW he thinks Pugh is "just flawless."
"Most actors, the director is there to shape them and steer them, and in the edit room you really shape a performance," he says. "But there's not a single thing Florence did that isn't correct, in my brain as the one who wrote it."
The director likens himself to a conductor and Pugh to his virtuoso. "You're not really teaching or telling the first violinist how to play. You might be like, 'Hey, a little bit louder here, a little bit softer here.' But you're just pretty much watching in awe at the first violinist playing, because they're incredible. I feel that with Florence."
The director has similarly high praise for the rest of his cast, especially Freeman and Shannon, of whom he says the main goal is to just stand back and "let them be their incredible selves." Freeman and Braff previously worked together on Going in Style, and the helmer says he was just as surprised then as he is now that he nabbed the legendary Oscar winner.
Jeong Park / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman in 'A Good Person'
"I never thought I could get Morgan, but I know that he really enjoyed his experience with me on Going in Style. And I said, you know, let's take a shot [with A Good Person]," he recalls. "And he called me very quickly, way sooner than I thought, and he said, 'I see myself on every page of the script.' And I was like, 'Is that a yes?' And he's like, 'Yeah, that's a yes.'
While A Good Person is hardly Braff's first rodeo, the MGM release did pose some unique challenges. There was the COVID of it all, particularly strenuous on an indie production. "So much of your budget needed to go to the safety measures," Braff explains, "so money that could normally be spent on more time or locations, or anything related to what the audience is going to see on the screen, is going to the safety protocols, which are tricky and slow everything down." Like most small-scale films, shooting also only took place over a short amount of time — 27 days, to be exact — but he praises his "amazing" New Jersey and New York-based crew for believing in the film and making it happen.
Ultimately, Braff knows the struggle of working through a pandemic isn't unique to his experience, nor is losing people you love. But he hopes all audiences will see themselves in his film. "They might not have the specifics of having four people close to you die in four years, but we've all been through something major with this pandemic," he says. "I think that you don't necessarily have to insert death — it could be a divorce, it could be the loss of a job, it could be the end of a major relationship, it could be whatever's been very hard for someone in their own life — that you could insert there, and this film is really about the process of standing back up after a low time."
Rebounding from tragedy is something the movies are good at. So, says Braff, is finding room to laugh "at the absurdity of some of the things we go through as human beings." A Good Person promises both: "That's the kind of movie that I like to see."
A Good Person, which is a Killer Films and Elevation Pictures production, hits select theaters March 24 and will release wide on March 31. Watch the trailer in the video above.
Jeong Park / Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Zach Braff behind the scenes of 'A Good Person'
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