On his team! Ben Affleck revealed that Jennifer Lopez recently gave him some good advice about his approachability — and he decided to take it.
“She gave me a talk this morning before this interview. She thinks that because of experiences that I’ve had, I’ve become very guarded,” the Oscar winner, 50, said during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Thursday, March 16. “And she’s right. I view these things as land mines, where if you say one wrong thing, your career might be over.”
The “Get Right” songstress, 52, told her husband that he should try loosening up a little bit. “She tells me today, ‘Relax, be yourself. Have fun. You’re a fun guy who is real and genuine and you just seem so serious,'” Affleck recalled. “Do I seem serious? But as in many things, she’s right. And she loves me. She’s looking out for me. She’s trying to help me. So, it’s like, maybe I ought to f–king listen to her.”
The Good Will Hunting screenwriter has been the subject of many memes joking about his perceived exasperation with life, most recently at the Grammys. While Lopez was smiling and dancing during the ceremony’s performances, Affleck looked like he’d rather have been anywhere else.
The Justice League actor clarified on Thursday that he actually “had a good time” at the Grammys, despite what social media users might have believed. “My wife was going, and I thought, ‘Well, there’ll be good music. It might be fun,'” he explained. “I mean, some of it is, I’m like, ‘Alright, who is this act?’ Like, I don’t keep up. My wife does, obviously. And yeah, it is your wife’s work event.”
The Massachusetts native also set the record straight on what the Hustlers actress really said to him during what appeared to be a tense exchange mid-show. Affleck saw Grammys host Trevor Noah approaching and assumed they were about to be part of a bit. The Argo director told Lopez that he was going to “slide away” to get out of the shot without realizing that cameras were already on the couple.
“She goes, ‘You better f–king not leave,'” Affleck explained, noting that he also wasn’t drunk, as some memes claimed. “That’s a husband-and-wife thing.”
The Last Duel actor went on to say that his “guarded” persona is the result of bad experiences with previous comments being taken out of context, citing a Howard Stern interview where he discussed his alcoholism and ex-wife Jennifer Garner. Affleck and the Alias alum, 50 — who share daughters Violet, 17, and Seraphina, 14, and son Samuel, 11 — called it quits in 2015 after 10 years of marriage.
“I had a really painful experience where I did an interview where I was really vulnerable, and the entire pickup was something that was not only not right, it was actually the opposite of what I meant,” Affleck explained. “We loved each other. We care about each other. We have respect for each other.”
During the December 2021 interview with Stern, 69, the Deep Water star said that he began drinking more as his marriage to Garner started unraveling. “That was part of why I started drinking alcohol — I was trapped,” he said at the time. “I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I am not happy. What do I do?’ What I did was drink a bottle of scotch on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
Days after his remarks made headlines, Affleck clarified that he didn’t blame Garner for his alcoholism — and was in fact hurt by the misinterpretation of his comments. “I don’t believe that. It’s the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe and I would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mom,” he said during a December 2021 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! “It hurts my feelings.”
