Florence Pugh Wrote Her Own Music For Zach Braff's A Good Person
Actor Florence Pugh is a person of many talents. In addition to acting, she's also capable of handling her hot sauces (as proven on "Hot Ones"), is an excellent cook who really loves food (courtesy of her "Cooking With Flo" Instagram stories), and, apparently, she's also a singer/songwriter. Long-time fans may have already known that Pugh could sing, as she used to perform as Flossie Ross on her YouTube channel. "A Good Person" writer and director Zach Braff wrote the main role of Allison, a young woman dealing with addiction and grief, specifically for Pugh, and he decided to include the actor's musical talents and history a part of the character as well. Allison uses music to help herself heal, and sings and plays music in the movie. That might be intimidating for an actor, but Pugh also apparently wrote all of the songs herself.
In an interview with W Magazine, Pugh explained that not only is that her singing and playing instruments in the movie, but she wrote the songs in-character to try and express the emotions that Allison was going through, giving an added layer of authenticity to an emotionally powerful story.
Writing music to explore her character
Over the course of the film, Allison writes and performs several songs, including one about the extent of her own self-loathing following an accident that serves as the catalyst for the movie's drama. Pugh was candid about how the songs came to be, and the effect it had on her as a performer:
"I wrote the songs partly to process who she was and how low she felt. I've never come close to feeling like this character before, nor do I know anyone that has. It was incredibly important to understand what she truly thought of herself. I wrote that song for it, and Zach put it in the movie. And I wrote another one for Chinaza. Really it was a way of getting into the scenes. It was a wild and weird experience, trying to figure out what Allison sounds like, how she sounds in rehab after months of torturing herself, and really figuring out how broken she is on a creaky piano in this creaky room. It was a true way into this person."
As a former angsty teenager who wrote lots of songs about how much she hated herself, I can identify with Allison's way of processing her pain and appreciate Pugh's dedication to making it feel authentic. Pugh is one of the best working actors today, and it's lovely to see her explore different avenues of her talents, both onscreen and off.
More music from Flossie
Since Pugh used to release music on her YouTube channel and guest-starred in one of her brother Tony Sebastian's songs, some fans might wonder if she wants to try and translate her singer-songwriter into a music career now that she's an established name. There's good news for fans of Flossie, as she definitely hopes to make and release more music:
"I would love to. I think the weird one for this was that I wrote it for a character and performed it as a character. So as much as I had the input of singing and writing for her, it was very much like she needed to perform those songs in the ways that she did. But for me, I got to record the songs outside of the film in the ways that I want them to be recorded as my songs. They're going to be released on the soundtrack. And hopefully this is going to continue."
On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Pugh also revealed that she's "been recording the last year ... the songs for the movie, and also some others that have been put down," and she strongly intimated that there would be an album release of some kind in the future.
In the meantime, fans who want to listen to Pugh's tunes can check out the "A Good Person" soundtrack or see the film, now in theaters nationwide.