Zach Braff tells us all about ‘A Good Person’, the movie he made for his ex-partner Florence Pugh

Allison’s (Florence Pugh) life couldn’t be better. Happily engaged and in a brilliant professional moment, everything changes after an unfortunate accident. That is the official synopsis of the new Zach Braff film with a stellar cast led by Florence Pugh, the director’s partner at the time, and Morgan Freeman. And we took advantage of it to speak exclusively with Zach Braff himself.

worst streak possible

Ten years separate Zach Braff’s debut feature, ‘Something in Common’, released in 2004, and his second feature as a director, ‘I wish I were here’ (2014). It took nine more years for this one-man band on the screen, known to the general public for his comedic roles –there’s ‘Scrubs’, the sitcom created by Bill Lawrence that he led for nine seasons–, but who becomes a filmmaker who delves into his neuroses and personal obsessions when he writes, present his fourth film as a director. Surely the one that has cost him the most effort to get ahead: ‘A good person’, a drama starring Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman. “The film was born from the suffering of the last four or five years,” says Braff in a virtual chat to FOTOGRAMAS. “In 2016, my sister Shoshana suffered an aneurysm, although she didn’t die until 2018. Then my father was diagnosed with cancer and died a few months later. Then we and my friend Nick Cordero – the actor with whom Braff played the musical ‘Bullets Over Broadway’ on the New York stage – who lived with me in my guest house contracted COVID and at only 41 years old with a young son passed away. My life was a chain of traumatic events. And seeing the consequences that these had on my family, in my closest circle, I decided to write something about what it means to get up again after a tragedy. I wrote it in the middle of a pandemic and I did it with Florence, who was my partner at the time, in mind. I did it thinking of her because I think she is the best actress on the planet,” he says convinced.

Story of an atonement

From that pain arises Allison, the role of Pugh, the central point of a plot populated by characters who cope as best they can with their losses and duels that Braff connects with one of the greatest social and medical tragedies of current American society: the opioid crisis. . “It’s something that infuriates me, that you can’t understand. And more after reading ‘The Empire of Pain’,” he says of Patrick Radden Keefe’s essay that led to the TV series ‘Dopesick: Story of an addiction’ ( Disney+). “It’s a very American problem, I’m aware, but it seemed logical to me to include that variant in Allison’s future. Not only because from a medical point of view it makes sense that she became an addict because of her pain treatment, but because emotionally it gives him what he is looking for: stop feeling”. Something that contrasts with the explosion of feelings that he, he says, were the scenes that Florence and Morgan Freeman shared on the set. “I loved seeing them go hand in hand, when you put two good actors together, the scene is elevated, because one demands the best of the other.”

The strength of humor

Having that pair of first swords, seconded by a cast in which Celeste O’Connor (2Ghostbusters: Beyond2) and the comedian Molly Shannon (2A promising young woman2) stand out, has allowed Braff to stay on the other side of the camera and save himself Act. “Let’s see, I think I’m a good actor, but not like them,” he jokes. “Writing and directing is screwed up enough. I felt like I could make a much better movie if I didn’t act in it.” A creative balance that Braff has also been in charge of transferring to the narrative stage, because ‘A good person’ combines the pain and mourning of Allison’s descent into hell with the humor that arises from the most dramatic moments. “Something that connects with my own experience of loss in recent years,” he says. “I remember being in the hospital waiting room and suddenly someone says something unexpected and everyone laughs. It’s something universal, but it also has to do with my preferences as a viewer. I grew up watching movies like ‘The Force of Endearment’ (1983), by James L. Brooks, ‘Harold and Maude’ (1971), by Hal Ashby, or the films of Cameron Crowe. Stories that make you laugh, but also break your heart. For some time now, there aren’t many … Hollywood has made us believe that sad movies don’t have an audience. I think differently. I think they do have an audience. What is certain is that, as a viewer, I don’t want to see something that has no humor in it precisely because in life, drama and humor are mixed. I want stories with characters with conflicts in which there is room for smiles and end, if possible, with a message of hope. This would be my ideal film”.

Cinema as therapy: Something to write about

“When I started the script for ‘A good person’ I had no idea what it would come out of. When I finished it I thought that, for the first time, I had written something that wasn’t just mine”, says Braff, aware of the autobiographical weight of ‘Something in common’ and ‘I wish I were here’, his first two films. “When I told my psychiatrist, he laughed. ‘Do you really think it’s not about you?’ On a more superficial level, I swear I thought not, but I was right. Beneath the plot is my life, my heart beats. All my films are versions of myself,” he says.