Brianna ‘Chickenfry’ LaPaglia claims ex Zach Bryan ‘emotionally abused’ her: ‘I’m still scared’
Two weeks after Zach Bryan announced his split from Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia, the podcast host is opening up about their relationship.
In the Thursday episode of Barstool Sports’ “BFFs” podcast, LaPaglia broke down Bryan’s alleged “narcissistic emotional abuse” as well as her decision to reject a $12-million nondisclosure agreement offered by his team — which she called “his final shot at still controlling me.”
“This isn’t about drama for me,” LaPaglia told co-hosts Dave Portnoy and Josh Richards. “This episode and me not taking the money, it’s not just for me. It’s for anyone else that’s been emotionally abused.
“I’m still scared right now because I’m scared of him,” she continued. “My brain’s rewired, and I’m scared to make him mad.”
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Representatives for Bryan did not immediately respond Friday to The Times’ request for comment.
Bryan last month confirmed his breakup with LaPaglia, whom he had been dating since July 2023, after screenshots of his profile on the celebrity dating app Raya circulated online. Hours later, LaPaglia wrote on her Instagram story that she was “really blindsided” and shared plans to “hop off social media for a while and attempt to heal privately.”
“I just wanted to deal with my breakup privately,” she said at the top of Thursday’s podcast episode. “But that was robbed from me, so here we are.”
While she was away on her That’s My Best Friend Tour in September, LaPaglia said, Bryan abruptly shifted from talking about their future together to saying, “I can’t do this anymore.” In her tour documentary, she said, “You can slowly watch the life fade from my f— eyes.”
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A “crazy cycle” ensued, LaPaglia said, with Bryan lashing out and then begging her to stay. Then one morning, she said, he told her that he was going back to Oklahoma: “I knew that was going to be the last time I saw him.”
LaPaglia said she hadn’t told her family about the split before Bryan posted about it. “Everyone in my life found out about my breakup from his Instagram story.”
After that, it was crickets from Bryan and one settlement offer after the next from his team, she said. The final offer was $12 million — what Portnoy called “life-changing money.”
LaPaglia said she refused to be like women who believed “they had no other choice than to take money from you, sign their experiences away, sign what they went through away.”
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While LaPaglia maintained that her aim with the episode was not to “nitpick everything he’s ever done” but to “speak up for other survivors,” she recalled a few alleged examples of Bryan’s behavior.
When Bryan didn’t like the gown LaPaglia wore to the Golden Globes, she said, he unfollowed her. When she left her birthday party to go to bed early, he ended the night yelling at her friends. When she refused to quit her Barstool gig, he offered to pay her double the salary, telling her she was “destined for so much more.”
“I was made to hate so many things about myself that I want to love,” LaPaglia said. “Everything good, anything good I did for me, he made sure to ruin it for me.”
“Why did I stay?” she added. “There’s no answer.”
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The “BFFs” episode comes after Portnoy and Richards released a diss track aimed at Bryan, which they said his team has repeatedly attempted to suppress through legal means. But with Barstool’s social media reach, Richards said, “it’s still getting millions of views.”
“If people want to say, ‘The diss track was immature, me talking about [Bryan] was immature,’” LaPaglia said near the podcast’s conclusion. “You know what’s f— immature?”
“The way you treated me,” she said, addressing Bryan. “Everything you did was immature.”
The day before the episode aired, Bryan announced the release of his latest single, “This World’s a Giant,” on Instagram.
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The singer said that upon returning home to Oklahoma, he visited his mother’s grave and “told her I quit touring because I got accepted to get my masters in Paris next year.” (Country music magazine Holler later reported that Bryan’s master’s program is in Paris, France.)
Within a few hours of Bryan’s post, LaPaglia wrote on her Instagram story that she “can’t believe how many women and men have experienced the same abuse. You have me, I’ll be a voice for you all always.”
“This is all two weeks out so I’m still processing everything I went through. I’ll continue to process and heal with you all!” she wrote. “Morals > 12 million.”
