Super stepdad! Jennifer Lopez sang husband Ben Affleck’s praises — and revealed how her two children feel about him as a stepparent.
“They love Ben,” Lopez, 53, said during the Wednesday, May 3, episode of the Today show. “He’s a wonderful, wonderful father. And a father figure to them as well, because he has his own three beautiful children, and then there’s us.”
The “Jenny From the Block” songstress, who shares twins Max and Emme, 15, with ex-husband Marc Anthony, noted that her spouse, 50, is “fantastic” with her teenagers. (Affleck, for his part, shares daughters Violet, 17, and Seraphina, 14, and son Samuel, 11, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner.)
“He really steps up to the challenge of what that is and what that means,” Lopez said of her partner. “And they love him. They love him. And they appreciate him, and so do I.”
The Shades of Blue alum noted that Max and Emme are “giving it” to her and testing her as a parent now that they are teenagers.
“Listen, they are becoming adults. They are challenging everything in life,” the Grammy nominee told cohost Hoda Kotb. “They’re thinking and talking about life in a different way than I did. They’re challenging everything. I think they’re going to change the world.”
When it comes to Affleck, whom she wed in July 2022, Lopez said fans will be taken behind the scenes of their love story in her upcoming album — including their reconnection after nearly 20 years apart.
“I went on an incredible journey through my for the past 20 years. I think I’ve grown a lot. The albums are about capturing those moments in time,” the Hustlers star explained on Wednesday. “[This record depicts] 20 years later us coming back together and trying to capture what this moment was, which was a very different thing. I think people are going to feel that on the album.”
She revealed that it’s “just me and my whole heart” on the record. “It does capture this moment in time for me when we first got back together. It’s a beautiful piece of work, I think,” the singer added.
Lopez’s marriage to Affleck was more than two decades in the making after the pair were first engaged from 2002 to 2004.
Following their split, the Marry Me star moved on with Anthony, 54, whom she wed in June 2004. The musicians, who welcomed their twins in 2008, called it quits in 2011. The Boy Next Door actress was later engaged to Alex Rodriguez from March 2019 to April 2021.
Affleck, for his part, married Garner, 51, in June 2005. The Argo director and the Alias alum announced their split in June 2015 and finalized their divorce in October 2018. They have since continued to coparent their three kids.
The Massachusetts native dated Lindsay Shookus and Ana de Armas before reconnecting with Lopez in spring 2021. In April 2022, the Gigli costars confirmed they were engaged for the second time. Affleck and Lopez walked down the aisle three months later and now share a home with the “Get Right” singer’s two children.
“We moved in together. The kids moved in together,” Lopez said during a January appearance on the Today show. “It’s been, like, a really kind of emotional transition, but at the same time all your dreams coming true.”
