Jennifer Lopez’s Partner ‘Never’ Thought ‘This Is Me Now … A Love Story’ Was a Good Idea
In 2024, Jennifer Lopez released This Is Me Now … A Love Story despite the extreme trepidation voiced by everyone from her longtime production partner to some of the film’s actors. Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, who has worked with Lopez on films like Hustlers and Maid in Manhattan, didn’t think the movie was a good idea. She shared why she never got fully on board with the project.
Jennifer Lopez’s producing partner had concerns about ‘This Is Me Now… A Love Story’
When Lopez began working on This Is Me Now … A Love Story, she struggled to obtain funding. After one partner pulled out, Lopez decided to finance the film herself. She called Goldsmith-Thomas to tell her she planned to put $20 million into the project.
“I’m in New York and she’s saying, ‘I think I’m going to finance this myself,’” Goldsmith-Thomas told Variety. “I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ I don’t even know what it is. What are you doing?’ I was worried. ‘Why are you sharing your story? It’s too personal. Stop it.’ It made me uncomfortable for her.”
Over time, though, Goldsmith-Thomas began to understand Lopez’s intention behind the film.
“I was afraid that she was telling her journey and that it would look like it was saying, ‘Here’s my journey from Ben to Ben,’” she said. “And it’s not about that. It’s about ‘Here’s what I’ve been through for the past 20 years, and I kept walking into the same wall and blaming the wall until I started to look at myself.’”
While she understood why Lopez wanted to make the film, Goldsmith-Thomas said she still couldn’t get fully on board with it.
“No! She never won me over,” she said. “I was petrified the whole time.”
Jennifer Lopez’s partner wasn’t the only one with doubts about the film
Goldsmith-Thomas was far from the only person to feel this way about the movie. Jane Fonda, who eventually took a part in the movie, worried about Lopez’s intentions with it.
“Like, it feels too much like you’re trying to prove something instead of just living it,” she said in a conversation in the documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told. “You know, every other photograph is the two of you kissing and the two of you hugging.”
Lopez herself wondered if she was making a mistake.
“Everybody thought I was crazy,” she said. “And by the way, I thought I was crazy.”
Ben Affleck felt a bit uncomfortable about the film
Lopez’s relationship with Ben Affleck was part of the inspiration for the film. He was not entirely comfortable with her putting their relationship on display in the movie.
“Things that are private I always felt are sacred and special because, in part, they’re private,” he said. “So this was something of an adjustment for me.”
In the documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told, Affleck pointed out that the title was paradoxical.
“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 said. “If you’re making a record about it, that seems kind of like telling it.”
