Ben Affleck Regretted Overshadowing ‘Gigli’ With His Relationship

Ben Affleck’s movie Gigli was upstaged by his own relationship with Jennifer Lopez at the time. And Affleck felt that it did more harm than good to the feature.

Ben Affleck felt ‘Gigli’ wasn’t given a fair chance

Gigli was perhaps most known for bringing Affleck and Lopez together. But Affleck asserted that the pair didn’t actually start dating until after the movie. While filming, however, they quickly became friends. Which helped them as they played romantic interests in the feature.

“Jennifer and I didn’t become romantically involved until after the movie was over, but in the course of making the movie, we did strike up a nice, easy friendship,” Affleck once told BBC. “We got along well and that makes it a lot easier. Look, it’s much easier to kiss someone you’re friendly with rather than someone you loathe, you know? Like when you can hardly bare to be around them?”

“So, liking the other person just puts you a step ahead,” Affleck added. “On top of that, it’s just a lack of anxiety. It’s like: ‘OK. Don’t be too alarmed about this. Nothing crazy is going to happen.’ But that is the difficulty about them. You’re not comfortable with the person, yet you’re sharing an intimate moment. It can provoke a lot of anxiety.”

But Affleck and Lopez were deep into a relationship by the time Gigli came out. This later turned out to be a regrettable situation for Affleck, who felt their romance distracted from a movie he had faith in.

“I think it is a shame. I regret it. I wish it weren’t so. There’s only so much I can do, unfortunately. Because of choices I made in my personal life subsequent to filming this movie, you know, this is one of the prices I pay,” he said. “I think Jennifer is wonderful in this movie, and I’m really proud of my work. I think it’s an interesting, really unusual, risk-taking movie by Hollywood standards, where it’s not about pyrotechnics or high concepts or anything like that. It’s just about people relating to each other in a kind of interesting, smart, exploratory way. So, you know, it’s overshadowed and that’s just a shame.”

Still, Affleck wanted audiences to look past their real-life relationship to engage better with the movie.

“People are going to miss the chance to enjoy it, because they’ll go to see the movie and still be carrying all this baggage from the tabloids – or wherever you’ve seen this stuff so it kind of gets in the way. But I hope that after the first 15 minutes or so of watching the movie, they can let that go and enjoy the ride,” he said.

Ben Affleck tried to strike a balance when promoting ‘Gigli’

Some wondered if Affleck was using his relationship with Lopez to promote Gigli. But Affleck asserted that was far from the case. He simply didn’t want to lie about, or hide, his relationship for the sake of the film’s success.

“Here’s my thing. I’m not interested in lying or changing anything to suit the needs of the press or to flout the press. I feel that that’s when you become corrupted, when you change who you are for an image, or something else,” he said.

Affleck’s plan was to approach his promotional tours for Gigli the same way he approached any of his prior films.

“I do interviews with co-stars all the time and you have to understand that it’s a balancing act. The press is going to ask about your personal life, and you have to try and draw boundaries where you feel boundaries are important. Look! It’s a Faustian bargain. They want to hear about the romance. You want to talk about the movie. So you try to strike as good a balance as you can, and then? You leave it behind you and move on,” he said.

But it appeared the strategy didn’t work. The movie under-performed commercially and received vastly negative reviews from critics. Even in Affleck’s later years, however, he still didn’t feel the movie was given a fair shake.

“The funny name, the Jennifer Lopez romance and overexposure of that, it was kind of a perfect storm,” Affleck told Entertainment Weekly.

But he credited Gigli’s failure for motivating him to become a director, which helped revitalize his career.

“But if the reaction to Gigli hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have ultimately decided, “I don’t really have any other avenue but to direct movies,” which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life. So in those ways, it’s a gift. And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life,” Affleck said.