Ben Affleck Worried Jennifer Lopez Would Be a ‘Pain in the A**’ on the Set of ‘Gigli’
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez met on the set of their film Gigli. While Lopez was married at the time, the actors felt an instant connection between them. Soon, they began dating and, not long after, they were engaged. Affleck said he didn’t expect this. Before he met Lopez, all he knew about her was that she had a diva reputation. He worried she would be a difficult co-star.
Ben Affleck wasn’t sure how Jennifer Lopez would behave on the set of their movie
In the early 2000s, tabloids reported on Lopez’s prima-donna attitude and outlandish demands on sets. Affleck had heard all this, and worried about working with her.
“I probably secretly thought like, you know, this is going to be a pain in the a** working with this woman,” he told Access Hollywood. “I’ll try to get through this thing and just, you know.”
Soon, though, his opinion of Lopez changed. He felt the rumors about her were untrue and unfair.
“And then it still wasn’t that way, and then at a certain point, I thought that’s a shame, you know what I mean?” he said. “This woman kind of has a bad rap.”
She denied that the rumors about her were true
Lopez was glad Affleck saw through the tabloid reports about her. She said it hurt when people believed the stories about her.
“All I do is really you know go to work and try to be professional and be on time and be prepared,” she said. “And then you hear all this stuff that people say about you, and yeah, it can be hurtful.”
She said people were often surprised when they met her and found her to be down to earth.
“And it’s funny the [rumors] that don’t die, like I’m always … yeah, I think people are always surprised,” she said. “Like when I go work on a movie or do something, when I show up and it’s just me and my cousin, my assistant and the driver, and they’re like, well, where is everybody else? This is it. It’s just me.”
Ben Affleck said Jennifer Lopez was the target of unfair criticism
In 2003, Affleck and Lopez postponed their wedding. The couple officially ended their relationship in early 2004. When reflecting on their abbreviated romance, Affleck said that the way people treated Lopez was incredibly unfair. The stories about her became more vicious after they started dating.
“People were so f***ing mean about her — sexist, racist,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “Ugly, vicious s*** was written about her in ways that if you wrote it now you would literally be fired for saying those things you said.”
He said he was glad to see her get the respect she deserved in the years after their split.
“Now it’s like, she’s lionized and respected for the work she did, where she came from, what she accomplished — as well she f***ing should be!” he said. “I would say you have a better shot, coming from the Bronx, of ending up as like [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor on the Supreme Court than you do of having Jennifer Lopez’s career and being who she is at 50 years old today.”
