Ben Affleck is opening up about his parenting dynamic with his ex-wife and the mother of his three children, Jennifer Garner.
“Their mom is spectacular and always makes me feel like I’m coming up a little short,” Affleck, 54, told Today’s Willie Geist in a Saturday, October 10, preview clip of his Sunday Sitdown interview with the Oscar-winner, which will air on Sunday, October 11.
“I’m like, ‘I think I’m doing about 75% as good as your mom?’ And they’re like, ‘Eh, maybe 40?’ Affleck continued, laughing at his children’s perceived split of his and his ex’s parental duties. “I’m maxing out, B+! Yeah!”
Affleck shares Violent, 20, Fin, 17, and Samuel, 14, with Garner, 54. The pair said “I do” in 2005 after first meeting on the set of the 2000 film Pearl Harbor. (At the time, Garner was married to Scott Foley.) They later reunited in 2002, on the set of Daredevil. In 2015, they announced their split and, three years later, their divorce was finalized.
While the pair have gone their separate ways romantically, they have remained a steadfast parenting unit.
“My kids are a little bigger [now]. Their dad … has become this incredible coparent,” Garner gushed to Entertainment Weekly back in July. “And I have this unbelievable [business] partner who produces with me things that we control and are able to help keep in L.A. … I love making movies anywhere, but I really want to make movies at home.”
She added at the time of Affleck, “He’s wonderful. He takes care of them. He’s a great partner in that way. And that’s very freeing.”
In a Wednesday, October 7, interview with Variety, Affleck again praised his parenting dynamic with Garner.
“I work hard, and then I go home and pick up the kids from school. We have dinner if they agree to hang out with me,” Affleck told the outlet at the time. “They’re with me for a week, then with their mom for a week.”
He continued, “They have a great thing with their mom, for whom I’m also really, really grateful. I know things will come up that are hard, and I don’t want to jinx that, but this time in my life as a human being is really wonderful.”
The partnership between the former couple is so great, in fact, that Affleck revealed he even considered casting his ex-wife in his new movie, Animals.
“In a movie, the illusion has to be the thing [though],” he told Variety of his decision to ultimately not include Garner in the film. “And I still want to find something to do with her.”
Affleck further elaborated on his decision to keep his private life separate from his art in a Thursday, October 8, interview with USA TODAY.
“I know there’s a tendency to watch actors – particularly when you have a lot of things you associate with the actor, that’s sort of our baggage — and sort of project those things onto them,” he said at the time. “The truth is, really, it’s not as correlative as you would think, except for the sense that you’ve got to have lived life to be able to relive it authentically.”
He added, “The circumstances of divorce with children is facing something that’s excruciatingly painful. People can identify with that if they’ve been through it. And as an actor, it’s your job to find something that’s related to that. Weirdly, as an actor, if you actually think about the exact moments that correlate to the exact thing, it’s too literal, and it sort of doesn’t work.”
