Florence Pugh's haircut in A Good Person caused a 'production nightmare,' says director Zach Braff.
The Academy Award nominee stars as Allison, a woman who is faced with death and addiction after being involved in a fatal car accident.
In one poignant scene, the 27-year-old movie star grabs a pair of scissors and chops off all of her hair. Director and former Scrubs star Braff tells UNILAD that his film's star and his former girlfriend was adamant on cutting her own hair, which created quite a conundrum for the film crew.
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While discussing Pugh’s outstanding physical transformation in the film, he explained: “Florence had the idea that she cuts her hair, which is a production nightmare because we’re shooting completely out of order, and if a character is going to have hair in one scene and chopped hair in the other and you don’t want to use wigs because I don’t particularly like the way wigs look, particularly on a low budget movie - I don’t even think high budget movie wigs look good - so we had a real puzzle put together, ‘How can we have Florence cut her hair live on camera and then schedule everything so that the scenes with hair happen first?’"
Pugh reassured Braff that everything would work out in the end. He continued: “I kept saying ‘That’s impossible’ and Florence kept saying, 'You guys will figure it out’ and we eventually did figure it out! So that was the biggest transformation. Some people thought that was a wig but she chopped it off on camera.”
The Garden State screenwriter and director wrote A Good Person with Pugh in mind, who also produced the film and wrote both songs she performs as Allison after Braff encouraged her to do so. “The world will find out now but I knew that Florence had an amazing voice and wrote her own music and had aspirations of putting out music because it’s a passion of hers,” he gushed.
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“I thought, ‘Wow this could be particularly special’ because she’s such a good actress she could actually write songs in the character, which would be so unique and not something we see very often. So, I asked her to do that and she was game and she did it.”
Braff was inspired to write the film – which also stars Morgan Freeman, Chinaza Uche, Celeste O'Connor and Molly Shannon - to capture his ‘own experience with loss and grief’. In the past four years he lost his father, sister and his best friend.
The opioid epidemic in the United States, which are deaths involving synthetic opioids – like illicitly made fentanyl and stimulants - was also an influence. The CDC reports that 187 people die everyday from an opioid overdose.
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“It just felt like a very American story to talk about, about this insane thing that has happened to our country,” Braff reflected.
The Emmy award nominee is writing his next film and hopes to work with Pugh again in the future, if she has the time because she’s very in demand. He also wouldn’t mind starring in a Marvel film as Mr. Fantastic and would love to share a scene with one character in particular. “I would love to be in a Marvel film, especially if I could be with Yelena from Black Widow. I wanna be in a scene with her!”
A Good Person in cinemas from 24 March and on Sky Cinema from 28 April.
Topics: Film and TV