Why Zach Braff Wanted to Write a Movie for "Incredible" Ex Florence Pugh

Zach Braff's relationship with Florence Pugh may be over, but he's not going to scrub her out of his life.

In fact, the Scrubs alum had nothing but kinds words about his ex—who stars in his latest directorial feature A Good Person—when he shared the story of how their movie came to be. Describing Pugh a "next-level actress," Zach said he specifically had the 27-year-old in mind when he first penned the script.

"I'm just in awe of her talent and I said, 'I wanna write this for Florence. What I'm writing is really gonna be challenging and she's incredible,'" he recalled to Entertainment Tonight. "It wasn't for your average actors—I couldn't have written the part for myself."

Braff, 47, went on to explain how he envisioned Florence acting "opposite some legend that everyone's talking about" while writing the movie. That dream casting became a reality when Morgan Freeman signed onto the project.

"It's just fascinating," Braff said of the two stars. "So many actors, including myself, think you have to do so much but you watch Florence and Morgan and they can just do a subtle turn of the head and it's brilliant." 

Also starring Molly Shannon, Chinaza Uche, Celeste O'Connor and Zoe Lister-Jones, A Good Person centers around an unlikely friendship between one woman (Pugh) and her would-be father-in-law (Freeman) after an unimaginable family tragedy. In addition to his roles as director and writer, Braff serves alongside Pugh as one of the film's producers. 

Out in theaters March 24, the movie's release comes eight months after Pugh confirmed that she and Zach broke up following three years of dating. "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 said in the September issue of Harper's BAZAAR, explaining how they had quietly split earlier in the year. "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."

Despite their breakup, Pugh and Braff remain in touch. Not only did they walk the red carpet together at the U.K. premiere of A Good Person earlier this month, but Pugh recently revealed that she and Braff still text.

"He told me to have fun tonight," she told Jimmy Fallon during her March 20 appearance on The Tonight Show. "He texted, 'Tell mommy I love him.' And it was typo and it was actually 'Jimmy.'"