Brianna LaPaglia didn’t say posing for a Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot was a flex after being dumped by Zach Bryan — but she kind of did.
The podcast host said she is “reclaiming myself” during an intro video to her digital photo spread.
- On Wednesday (Jan. 15), SI Swimsuit announced LaPaglia as the January 2025 digital cover.
- The caption that appears alongside the cover photo leans into her “incredibly public breakup” and details how she was offered millions to stay silent about what happened during their time together.
- LaPaglia outed the offer and started sharing all the details on her platforms and the BFFs podcast.
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“It means so much more to me than like, feeling sexy and being in a location,” LaPaglia shares in a reel sent to socials ahead of the magazine cover reveal. “I’m allowed to do what I want to do. I’m allowed to do it in any fashion, in any amount of clothes in front of whoever I want and no one has the control over you to tell you what you can and cannot do.”
In November, she accused Bryan of emotional abuse. “He isolated me from my whole entire life, he wouldn’t let me be who I wanted to be, he made me hate everything that I loved about myself,” she shared on her pod. “He broke me down and then made me feel like he was all I had left, and he just kept repeatedly beating me down and beating me down.”
Bryan has never responded to her specific accusations — he didn’t comment on her cover story either — and she’s continued to drop more anecdotes that paint him as controlling. Now she’s on something of a reclamation tour.
“To me, this isn’t just like ‘check it off the bucket list,'” she shares. “This is like reclaiming myself.”
LaPaglia’s photos were taken at the La Quinta Resort in La Quinta, Calif. Katherine Goguen is the photographer.
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