Never backing down! When it comes to her love life, Florence Pugh isn’t afraid to put trolls in their place.
The Little Women star was first linked to Zach Braff in April 2019 when they were spotted holding hands in New York City. The same month, Pugh starred in In the Time It Takes to Get There, a short film written and directed by Braff. While details of their romance were kept relatively private, the British actress stood her ground against comments about the 21-year age gap between her and her man.
“@zachbraff you’re 44 years old,” a fan commented on an Instagram post of Pugh’s in December 2019 after the Scrubs alum had added a princess emoji in the comments.
“And yet he got it,” the Midsommar actress replied, quickly shutting down the negativity.
Four months later, Pugh opened up about the “abuse” that both she and Braff faced since taking their relationship public. The Oscar nominee penned a thoughtful tribute to the Garden State actor in honor of his 45th birthday that month — but wasn’t too pleased with the reactions she saw from her followers.
“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,” she said in a lengthy Instagram video at the time. “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.”
Despite seeing a number of “horrid” messages about her relationship online, Pugh declared that she was old enough to make her own decisions about who she does or doesn’t want to date.
“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,” she said in April 2020. “And it really has nothing to do with you.”
In August 2022, however, Pugh confirmed that she and Braff had called it quits. “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. “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. So we’ve done that. I automatically get a lumpy throat when I talk about it.”
The confirmation came after months of speculation about the duo’s relationship status. Three months earlier, the Fighting With My Family actress shut down rumors that she was dating Will Poulter after she was spotted hanging out with him in Spain. “No, Will Poulter and I are not dating,” she wrote via Instagram at the time. “We went to the beach with our friends, who are always about half a metre [sic] away from us in every picture, but have been cleverly cut out/framed out so that it looks otherwise.”
Scroll down to see more of Pugh’s most biting comebacks about her relationship.