Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Halftime’ Documentary Revelations: From Shakira Drama to Ben Affleck’s Cameo

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Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Halftime’ Documentary Revelations: From Shakira Drama to Ben Affleck's Cameo

A look inside J. Lo’s world. Jennifer Lopez brought cameras along as she prepared to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show, but viewers learned more than just how she and Shakira planned their sets. “No matter what I achieved, their appetite to cover my personal life overshadowed everything that was happening in my career. I just had a very low self-esteem,” the 52-year-old performer admitted in Halftime, which started streaming on Netflix Tuesday, June 14. “I really believed a lot of what they said, which is I wasn’t any good. I wasn’t a good singer, I wasn’t a good actress, I wasn’t a good dancer. I wasn’t good at anything.” While looking back at her decades-long career, Lopez is candid about the difficulties of being taken seriously as a Latina woman in Hollywood. As a result, the Grammy nominee and her team were less than thrilled when the NFL opted to name Shakira as the co-headliner for the 2020 Super Bowl. “Typically, you have one headliner at a Super Bowl. That headliner constructs a show, and, should they choose to have other guests, that’s their choice,” Lopez’s longtime manager, Benny Medina, said. “It was an insult to say you needed two Latinas to do the job that one artist historically has done.” Lopez doesn’t slam Shakira — but she also doesn’t mince words when it comes to the decision to split the time on stage. [jwplayer 2oyyQoLC-zhNYySv2] “We have six f—king minutes. We have 30 seconds of a song, and if we take a minute, that’s it, we’ve got five left. But there’s got to be certain songs that we sing, though. We have to have our singing moments. It’s not going to be a dance f—king revue,” the “Let’s Get Loud” singer declared. “We have to sing our message. … This is the worst idea in the world to have two people do the Super Bowl. It was the worst idea in the world.” While Lopez was engaged to Alex Rodriguez during the production of Halftime, the athlete does not appear. Fans do, however, briefly hear from Ben Affleck (more on that cameo below) and see how close Lopez is with her 14-year-old twins, Max and Emme, whom she shares with ex-husband Marc Anthony. “Like, even now, I’m not gonna get into what my relationships were like. But in how it relates to me and the journey that I’ve been on, I had to learn that the key was not so much about other people but about yourself,” Lopez explained. “It’s about being your own keeper and not looking for somebody to give you a home but making your own home.” Halftime is streaming now. Scroll through for the biggest takeaways:

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Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Halftime’ Documentary Revelations: From Shakira Drama to Ben Affleck's Cameo

A look inside J. Lo’s world. Jennifer Lopez brought cameras along as she prepared to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show, but viewers learned more than just how she and Shakira planned their sets. “No matter what I achieved, their appetite to cover my personal life overshadowed everything that was happening in my career. I just had a very low self-esteem,” the 52-year-old performer admitted in Halftime, which started streaming on Netflix Tuesday, June 14. “I really believed a lot of what they said, which is I wasn’t any good. I wasn’t a good singer, I wasn’t a good actress, I wasn’t a good dancer. I wasn’t good at anything.” While looking back at her decades-long career, Lopez is candid about the difficulties of being taken seriously as a Latina woman in Hollywood. As a result, the Grammy nominee and her team were less than thrilled when the NFL opted to name Shakira as the co-headliner for the 2020 Super Bowl. “Typically, you have one headliner at a Super Bowl. That headliner constructs a show, and, should they choose to have other guests, that’s their choice,” Lopez’s longtime manager, Benny Medina, said. “It was an insult to say you needed two Latinas to do the job that one artist historically has done.” Lopez doesn’t slam Shakira — but she also doesn’t mince words when it comes to the decision to split the time on stage. [jwplayer 2oyyQoLC-zhNYySv2] “We have six f—king minutes. We have 30 seconds of a song, and if we take a minute, that’s it, we’ve got five left. But there’s got to be certain songs that we sing, though. We have to have our singing moments. It’s not going to be a dance f—king revue,” the “Let’s Get Loud” singer declared. “We have to sing our message. … This is the worst idea in the world to have two people do the Super Bowl. It was the worst idea in the world.” While Lopez was engaged to Alex Rodriguez during the production of Halftime, the athlete does not appear. Fans do, however, briefly hear from Ben Affleck (more on that cameo below) and see how close Lopez is with her 14-year-old twins, Max and Emme, whom she shares with ex-husband Marc Anthony. “Like, even now, I’m not gonna get into what my relationships were like. But in how it relates to me and the journey that I’ve been on, I had to learn that the key was not so much about other people but about yourself,” Lopez explained. “It’s about being your own keeper and not looking for somebody to give you a home but making your own home.” Halftime is streaming now. Scroll through for the biggest takeaways:

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J. Lo Felt ‘Lost’ After Marc Anthony Split

“As an artist, I kind of lost a little bit of who I was in trying to build a perfect family life. And when my kids were 3, I got divorced, I was a single mom with two little kids. At 42, movie roles were not knocking at my door and as I was getting back to work, I felt like I didn’t know what my value was anymore,” she explained. “I was doing American Idol — that was my first big job after I had babies and it was good for me at the time. People could see me for who I was, and that changed everything. I really learned a lot about myself. I had purpose, and I just felt I had to work on my acting more, my singing more, my dancing more … everything. I just need to be better in every way.”

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Sharing the Stage With Shakira

Lopez communicates with Shakira throughout the film. According to the Marry Me star, the NFL wanted Lopez and the “Hips Don’t Lie” singer to “be weaved throughout the show” — but the women didn’t agree.

“They said 12 minutes. I got kind of a good confirmation that we could have an extra minute or two, so now we’re at, like, 13, 14 minutes,” Lopez said. “I think, Shakira, what we should have is you should have half the time and I should [have half]. If it was going to be a double headliner, they should have given us 20 minutes. That’s what they should’ve f—king done.”

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J. Lo Almost Asked Bruce Springsteen to Appear

Before opting to have daughter Emme sing “Born in the USA” with her at the Super Bowl, Lopez debated trying to get Springsteen to appear.

“I started thinking my daughter could sing ‘Born in the USA’ in the finale. I’ve been trying to get Bruce Springsteen to do a cameo,” she said. “But then I thought that it’s so much more powerful if Emme sings ‘Born in the USA’ as a little young Latina girl.”

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NFL Wanted Changes 24 Hours Before Show

Lopez wanted to make a statement with her performance and claimed the NFL “had a real concern about making a political statement about immigration” through the singer’s idea to put dancers in cages.

“I get a call from Ben and he’s like, ‘They want to pull the cages.’ That night, the higher-ups at the NFL saw it for the first time and were like, ‘Hey! You can’t do that!'” she claimed. “They did not want those cages in the show … coming down from the highest level. … For me, this isn’t about politics; this is about human rights. I’m facing the biggest crossroads of my life — being able to perform on the biggest stage of my life, but to take out the cages and sacrifice everything I believe in would be like never being here at all.”

Lopez ultimately won the fight. “At this point, I was very upset and I was like, ‘Benny, I don’t care what we have to do, but I’m not changing the show. The Super Bowl is tomorrow and we’re not changing anything,’” she said.

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Ben Affleck’s Cameo

Affleck, who proposed to Lopez in April 2022 decades after their original engagement, spoke out about previous unfair treatment of the musician. “I said to her once, ‘Doesn’t this bother you?’” the actor recalled. “And she said, ‘I’m Latina. I’m a woman. I expected this. You just don’t expect it. You expect to be treated fairly.’”

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Oscars Snub

Lopez can’t hide her disappointment when she isn’t nominated for Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the Oscars in 2020 for her performance in Hustlers.

“The truth is, I really started to think I was gonna get nominated,” she admitted. “I got my hopes up because so many people were telling me I would be. And then it didn’t happen. And I had to ask myself, ‘What does that mean?’ I do this not for an award. Or to do my hits up and seem like I’m the best performer in the world. No, I do this to … tell stories and to effect change and connect with people and make them feel things because I wanna feel something.”