Zach Braff's 'A Good Person' with Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman tackles addiction, recovery, hope

LOS ANGELES -- Zach Braff is probably best known as the star of the long-running TV sitcom, "Scrubs." But he's also a writer and a director.

His latest film is the drama, "A Good Person."

Florence Pugh stars in the film and plays a young woman about to marry the love of her life. But her involvement in a fatal accident with her fiancé's family changes everything. The marriage is off, and then she gets addicted to opioids during her recovery.

"We hear about it all the time and it's so massive and overwhelming that, you know, we don't know how to discuss it," Braff said. "So I thought there was something interesting of - let me show you the genesis just in one person, just in a young woman who this happens to."

When she walks into an AA meeting for help, she runs into the man who would have been her father-in-law, played by Morgan Freeman.

Braff wrote this project during the pandemic for his then girlfriend, Pugh, someone he considers the best actress of her generation. He'd worked with Freeman before, when he directed the heist comedy, "Going in Style."

"I sent him the script thinking he would go, 'Thank you but I don't do tiny indies that are shot in 26 days.' And he loved it!" said Braff. "And he said, 'I see myself on every page of this script.' And I said, 'Does that mean yes?' And he said, 'That means yes.' And then we were off to the races!"

Braff wrote this to deal with his own grief. Before the pandemic, he lost his sister to an aneurysm and his dad to cancer. During the pandemic, his best friend died of COVID.

"I made a movie that I really wanted to see, something that was speaking to grief and addiction because I've had both in my life. But also do it in a heartbreaking, but funny way," said Braff.

"A Good Person" is rated R. It's in theaters now.