Florence Pugh knows it “bugs people” to see her happy with boyfriend Zach Braff. But she isn’t changing anything about her life just to please her critics.
The 25-year-old actor opened up about her relationship with the Scrubs star, 46, in a new interview with The Sunday Times published over the weekend.
“I think it bugs people that it’s not who they expected,” Pugh said of dating the director.
The interviewer asked, “Who should she be with, then? Timothée?” in reference to Pugh’s former “Little Women” co-star, who is also 25. “Exactly,” Pugh replied.
“But it’s my life and I’m not doing anything to please people or to make it a better headline or story,” she said. “I want to also be a person!”
Pugh also opened up about a video she recorded on Instagram last year after facing abuse online for simply posting a birthday tribute to Braff.
The Midsommar star told followers at the time that she does “not need you to tell me who I should and should not love” and that “it is not your place and really, it has nothing to do with you.”
“It’s so weird to me to go on to someone’s page and shit on it,” Pugh told The Sunday Times. “That’s so not my nature — to go and bully for the sake of bullying.”
“It’s such an odd thing that we’ve become OK with in the past ten years of social media,” she added. “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 has previously pushed back on people’s criticism of the couple’s 21-year age gap. Once, after Braff commented on one of Pugh’s posts with a princess emoji, a random troll wrote to him saying “you’re 44 years old.”
“And yet he got it 👌🏽,” Pugh quipped.