Zach Bryan has been embroiled in a public feud with his ex-girlfriend, Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia, and Dave Portnoy, Brianna’s co-host on Barstool Sports’ BFFs podcast, and now Brianna has spoken more about the messy breakup on the latest episode of the show.
“The last year of my life has been the hardest year of my life dealing with the abuse from this dude,” she said. “I’m still scared right now because I’m scared of him. My brain’s rewired and I’m scared to make him mad and last week, I didn’t want to talk about it ’cause I was scared.”
She alleges that Zach makes partners sign NDAs to prevent them from publicly discussing their experiences with him, and Brianna says that she turned down Zach’s offer of $12 million and a New York apartment to sign one. “It came down to the point of I’m not the people before, and I was someone before you, and you made the women before me believe that they had no other choice than to take money from you, sign their experiences away, sign what they went through away,” she says.
“You get to go skip off and sing your little fucking songs on stage like you’re a good dude. You get to treat people around you like shit. Sorry, I’m not them. I don’t want your money; I don’t want in two years to buy a fucking house and think, ‘Oh, this is the money from the dude that literally fucking destroyed me and broke me for a year.'”
“I did not accept any money. I will not accept any money,” she continued. “I think that’s beneath me. I don’t think you can pay people off that you hurt for them to protect you. I think that in itself, offering millions of dollars to this apparent beautiful relationship to keep it a secret, speaks volumes.”
“This isn’t about drama for me. This is for anyone else that’s been emotionally abused and for people right now being emotionally abused. It’s for people that don’t have a support system that I luckily had going through this.”
The new podcast episode also follows a diss track from Dave Portnoy and their third co-host Josh Richards aimed at Zach called “Smallest Man.” The song has reportedly faced multiple takedown attempts.
Zach has not publicly responded to Brianna’s latest claims, but he commented on their breakup in an Instagram story last month, writing:
Addressing something: Brianna and me have broken up with [each other] and I respect and love her with every ounce of my heart. She has loved me unconditionally for a very long time and for that I’ll always thank her. I have had an incredibly hard year personally and struggled through some pretty severe things. I thought it would be beneficial for both of us to go our different ways. I am not perfect and never will be. Please respect Brianna’s privacy and space in this and if you have it in your heart, mine too. With everything I am and to anyone I let down, I am sorry. I try my best in everything. I failed people that love me and mostly myself.
Zach did, meanwhile, release two new songs this week, and he just posted a reminder about his remaining 2024 tour dates. The new songs include yesterday’s “This World’s A Giant” and today’s “High Road,” the latter of which comes with this statement:
After not being home for a year and a half I drove out to my mothers gravestone in the dead of night a few days back on familiar Oklahoma roads and I came to realize just like in the past, that she never would call me again.
Told her I quit touring because I got accepted to get my masters in Paris next year, I told her I was back in Oklahoma, told her about all my best friends in New York and all the nights we howled with the moon, told her about the immeasurable laughter my band and me have shared these last five years, all the calluses on my finger tips, every tear shed, told her about making it on The Rolling Stone and most importantly told her about porch swinging with my beautiful sister.
I wrote the chorus for this song a month or two back and finished it when I realized I was blessed with all these things.
I figured it was about time I released it.
Thank you guys for listening to ‘This Worlds a Giant’ last night and thank you to all the people who love me; who have truly carried the weight with me.
Seems that all these Quiet Dreams have gotten much too heavy but I’m home now and I’ll hold you through the pain.
High Road is out today and I appreciate all of you.
You can watch the BFFs episode and hear “High Road” below.