Ben Affleck Repeated 1 of His Biggest Career Regrets With Jennifer Lopez After They Reunited
Ben Affleck learned a few valuable lessons after dating Jennifer Lopez the first time. So when the couple reunited decades later, they did so hoping they wouldn’t repeat the mistakes that doomed their relationship years ago. Still, Affleck and Lopez redid a moment that was heavily looked down upon by the media years ago.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez paid homage to this infamous moment in the 2000s
Lopez and Affleck felt they could give their relationship a second chance after being in better places both mentally and professionally. For Lopez, the past wasn’t a warning to remain platonic friends with Affleck. Instead it served as a guideline of what not to do during the second phase of Bennifer.
“You have to do what feels good to you all the time. But at the same time, you learn from the past, you do things better the second time. There’s a part of it that, yes, we’re together. But there’s a part of it that’s not, you know, being so open the way we were when we were so young and in love many years ago,” she told The New York Times in 2022.
One of the reasons they broke up in the first place was the constant negative attention from the media. Affleck and Lopez believed they were mistaken as attention seekers flaunting their romance to the public at every opportunity. The music video for the song “Jenny From the Block” only further solidified this notion in the eyes of the media. Affleck made a cameo in the iconic video shoot, lying next to his ex-girlfriend on a yacht while admiring and touching her body. This only led to the couple experiencing even more backlash.
Affleck was candid about his feelings towards the music video years later, wishing he never appeared in it.
“If I have a big regret, it was doing the music video. But that happened years ago. I’ve moved on,” he once said according to Irish Examiner.
After rekindling their love, however, Lopez and Affleck repeated their iconic shot decades later according to Daily Mail.
In 2021, the pair ended up going on a romantic trip for Lopez’s 52nd birthday party. They were spotted on their multi-million dollar yacht at sea, recreating the yacht shot from Lopez’s music video. They posed similarly to how they did all those years ago. Lopez even wore an outfit not unlike the bathing suit she sported way back then.
Lopez smiled and stuck her tongue out at photographers who captured the moment. But the image didn’t receive nearly as much heat as it did decades ago. Many recognized the homage, and saw it as a trip down memory lane.
Ben Affleck felt audiences missed the point of the ‘Jenny From the Block’ music video
It turned out that Affleck and Lopez’s infamous music video was supposed to seem obnoxious. In a resurfaced interview with Comic Book Resources, Affleck was asked why he decided to appear in the video. Especially when, at the time, the actor asserted that he was against the type of attention he and Lopez were attracting.
“I’ll tell you why, with so many astute, sharp people in the press that so many people missed the point of that, which was to sort of satirize the very thing that was happening,” Affleck said. “We were in the midst of this manic, crazy, paparazzi coming out of the bushes, photographs coming from the most mundane, bizarrely every-day activities. They would be, not only published, but they’d be bid on.”
“I thought to myself, here’s a really good example to hold up this particular pop-culture phenomena to the light and ask, ‘What is this thing that we kind of collectively engage in? This group voyeurism,’” he added. “’The act of paparazzism that takes the very mundane and through the grainy prism of a long lens casts this other light on it to make it look more glamorous and more sexy. Why does it fascinate people?’”
The fact that real paparazzi showed up during the shoot to snap pictures would further add weight to the video’s message. So Affleck insisted for the video’s director to capture the paparazzi in the shoot as well.
He acknowledged, however, that the video backfired. Although its message wasn’t lost on everyone.
“That was the point. And still, some people recognized it as that and some people said, ‘Oh, this is just further exploitation of your personal life,’” he said.
