Ben Affleck isn’t the kind of celebrity who likes to talk about his personal life, but he let his guard down for wife Jennifer Lopez’s latest project, This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.
Lopez, 54, dropped her “cinematic odyssey” earlier this month along with her ninth studio album, This Is Me … Now. The album is a sequel to 2002’s This Is Me … Then, which was released at the height of her first romance with Affleck, now 51.
In the movie, a fictionalized Lopez, called “The Artist,” learns how to love herself after a series of failed romances. Affleck only has a couple of brief cameo appearances in the film, but the couple’s real-life history is all over the screen — which is just the way Lopez wanted it.
“Now I feel like because Ben and I have rediscovered each other — and now that we’re married — I have something to offer,” she explained to Variety earlier this month. “This is the defining piece of work that’s going to close that chapter so I can move on to the next part of my life.”
Affleck, however, seems to be somewhat less enthusiastic about his wife spilling the beans on their lives, or at least that’s how he comes off in the accompanying documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told.
“I did really find the beauty and the poetry and the irony in the fact that it’s the greatest love story never told,” he tells the camera at one point in the film, which debuts on Prime Video Monday, February 26. “If you’re making a record about it, that seems kind of like telling it.”
Keep scrolling to see everything Affleck said about Lopez’s deeply personal new project in The Greatest Love Story Never Told:
The Nickname He Never Asked For
Early in the documentary, Affleck recalls being surprised to learn that his wife was showing her cowriters and producers the actual love letters he’d sent her.
“I came to the house one day, and she had told me, ‘Musicians are coming, this great producer Rogét [Chahayed], blah blah blah,’ and then I went down there and my book that I had given her was down there,” Affleck says. “She was like, ‘I’ve been reading, this is the kind of inspiration, I’ve been showing them the book.’ I was like, ‘You’ve been showing all the musicians all those letters?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, we call you Pen Affleck, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’”
Public vs. Private
Affleck thought it was ironic to make a record about the “greatest love story never told,” but he admitted he understands Lopez’s goal, as he is also an artist who draws inspiration from his own past.
“Jen was really inspired by this experience, which is how artists do their work,” he explains. “They get inspired by their personal life, it moves you, I know as a writer and director I certainly do the same things. But things that are private I had always felt are sacred and special in part because they’re private. So, this was something of an adjustment for me.”
Lopez, meanwhile, acknowledges that Affleck isn’t as willing a participant in the project. “I don’t think he’s very comfortable with me doing all of this,” she says. “But he loves me, he knows I’m an artist and he’s gonna support me in every way he can because he knows he can’t stop me from making the music that I made and writing the words that I wrote. That’s gonna happen, and he doesn’t want to stop me. … But that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable being the muse.”
Healing the Inner Child
At one point, Affleck compares Lopez’s journey of self-discovery to his own battle with alcoholism. “Jen felt emotionally neglected as a child. We’re kind of learning more and more [that] it doesn’t have to be the kind of trauma where you’re locked in a basement for a year to leave wounds on you,” he says. “In fact, they’re deceptive and they’re harder to pin down. It’s a hard thing to look at somebody whose professional life is wildly successful and on Instagram looks like they’re living the happiest life in the world. The thing you discover, like you do with alcohol, is that there isn’t enough alcohol in all the liquor stores in the world to fill up that thing, and in Jennifer’s case, I don’t think there’s enough followers or movies or records or any of that stuff to still that part of you that still feels a longing and pain. Ultimately, that’s the work that you’ve gotta do on your own.”
The Rise of an Instagram Husband
Affleck also confesses that he was not interested in appearing on Lopez’s social media accounts when they rekindled their romance in 2021. She quickly convinced him to come around, which he says happened in part because he realized that social media is just part of the deal when you’re dating a world-famous pop star.
“When Jen and I broke up before, the catalyst for that was this massive amount of scrutiny around our private life. I had a very firm sense of boundaries initially around the press, while Jen I don’t think objected to it in the way I did. I very much did object to it,” he explains. “Getting back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media,’ and then I sort of realized it’s not a fair thing to ask. It’s sort of like you’re gonna marry a boat captain and you go, ‘Well, I don’t like the water.’ We’re just two people with different approaches trying to learn to compromise.”
Proud Partner
Despite his initial misgivings about being the subject of both an album and a “genre-bending” film, Affleck says he’s ultimately proud of what Lopez achieved.
“She’s still pushing the rock uphill. And I wanna say, like, ‘You did it, you did it. It’s OK. You did it, you proved it, you’re great, you can let it go for a minute, you don’t have to carry this, you don’t have anything to prove,’” he tells the camera. “It’s the first time she’s done something as an artistic form of expression that was purely for the sake of what she had to express. It was about bringing out things that she felt inside that she just wanted to say. And I don’t really love being in the making-of documentary about my personal life, which is why I’m so relieved that it seems like I might be in [This Is Me … Now: A Love Story], but I’m not really. I was worrying for no reason. The movie wasn’t about me. It was about the ability to love yourself. And that love story is a lot f–kin’ harder to find than Prince Charming.”
