Zach Bryan and Brianna Chickenfry: Their Love ‘Fried’ Out

BFFs is a weekly podcast that is hosted by Dave Portnoy, Josh Richards and Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia that covers current events as content, such as pop culture, celebrities, influencers, and Tik Tok. They stream on several different social media platforms, such as youtube, apple podcasts, spotify, and amazon music with a new episode each week. Their most recent episode covers the breakup between the hit country artist Zach Bryan and Brianna Chickenfry. The couple broke up about a year after dating in a public breakup announcement on instagram by Zach. In this post, I will discuss the events that occurred and how the podcast demonstrates Zach Bryan’s crime against women who he has had intimate relationships with.

Zach Bryan is a U.S. Navy Veteran and Oklahoma native that is best known for his country hits “Pink Skies”, “Revival”, and “Something in the Orange”. He has received a total of four Grammy notifications for his musical releases and won a Grammy for his work with Kacey Musgraves. Brianna rose to fame because of her popular Tik Tok account where she has 1.6 million fans who she updates on with her daily life, love, and career. She hosts two podcasts, “PlanBri Uncut Barstool Sports” and the “BFFs” podcast.
During the BFFs podcast, Bri discusses her experience of the relationship and how it has affected her. To begin, Bri discloses that she refused to sign a 12 million-dollar NDA offered from Zach Bryan’s management team because she wanted to be able to publicly discuss her experiences and support women who have similar experiences. An NDA is a non-disclosure agreement that is a legally binding contract that protects sensitive information from being shared, in this case it is the details of their relationship. You might think that this is a serious amount of money to be offered just for a simple break-up between an influencer and a famous music artist. However, during the podcast it becomes clear why she was offered such a grand sum of money for her silence.

Brianna exposes the emotional abuse that she experienced during the relationship and how that has caused the past year to be “the hardest year of [her] life”. On her birthday she brought Zach to her aunt’s home along with her closest friends to celebrate. However, Zach became aggressive toward those that she loves and began yelling and smashing glass in the home that he was welcomed in. Not only did this break Brianna’s heart, but it emotionally damaged those around her. This was not the only instance where she experienced emotional abuse. In events such as the golden globes and her tour, Zach caused emotional distress to the point where she was constantly worried about changing herself in order to keep him happy. She explains that “Everything good, anything good I did for me, he made sure to ruin it for me. He ruined my birthday, he ruined my tour, he ruined the Golden Globes. Anything Brianna did for Brianna, he had to ruin it.”. When she prioritized herself, she was punished, starting the abusive cycle that she unknowingly became a part of. She continues to remove her phone case to reveal a smashed phone that he repeatedly smashed against the wall when he was violent. She states how “Everyone in my personal life knew what I was going through” and not the general public because she purposefully did not want to expose their relationship. Zach constantly created emotional abuse to Brianna in instances like this that she chose to hide from the public in order to maintain his happiness. Brianna also has several pieces of video evidence that prove the amount of abuse that she experienced, explaining where the reason for the NDA comes from. The NDA was Zach’s attempt to cover the emotional abuse that he has caused Brianna in order to continue his music career without causing bad publicity to his name.

This specific podcast demonstrates how easy it is to unknowingly become a victim of an abusive relationship, whether it is emotional or physical. And Brianna was not alone. She also claims that the previous women he had a relationship with were made to sign NDAs. In response, she claims “You made the women before me believe that they had no other choice but to take money from you”. Although the actions by Zach Bryan were not illegal, it is definitely considered shameful and wrong. In extreme cases, many people who experience emotional abuse can qualify for a restraining order. A few states specifically allow someone to get a restraining order based on “coercive control”, which is a form of emotional and psychological abuse. Although women might feel alone when experiencing emotional abuse, they now have Brianna as a resource and those who relate as a support system.