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Everything Jennifer Lopez Said About Ben Affleck in New Zane Lowe Interview

Photo: Getty

Though Bennifer 2.0 has been making headlines for well over a year, there’s still so much Jennifer Lopez Affleck hasn’t told us about their rekindled relationship…until now.

In an interview promoting her upcoming album, This Is Me…Now, a follow-up to the Ben Affleck–inspired album released in 2002 titled This Is Me…Then, Lopez Affleck spoke to famed celebrity interviewer Zane Lowe about their 20-year journey back to each other.

Here’s everything Jennifer Lopez Affleck told Lowe in their Apple Music interview, which you can watch below.

On revisiting This Is Me…Then after 20 years:

“Twenty years ago I fell in love with the love of my life. I was working on an album and it was called This Is Me…Then. It was all about capturing that moment in time. Now the most amazing, incredible, unbelievable thing has happened. The reason we’re here is because I want to capture this moment in time because it is even better than the first time.”

Lopez Affleck continued, “That album, This Is Me…Then really captured a moment in time where I fell in love with the love of my life. It’s all right there on the record. I didn’t even realize what was happening and what I was doing. It was just every day going from the set to the recording studio, doing the thing, being in love, him coming into the studio, writing ‘I’m Glad’ and going, ‘This reminds me of….’ You know what I mean? Me tweaking the lyrics with him. Every single song that we wrote there, me writing ‘Dear Ben,’ it was such a special moment in time to have captured.”

On falling in love with Affleck for the first time:

“I think what happened is, as we worked together [on the movie Gigli], we became such good friends. We realized that we were crazy about each other. I found myself kind of thinking about him after the movie was over. And having to take care of my own business, because I was coming out of a relationship at that time. But it’s like you just knew it. It’s just like, “This is the person I want to be with.” And that happened over a period of months. It wasn’t an instant thing because we weren’t allowed to do that. Yeah, it kind of grew over time.”

How the celebrity and tabloid culture tore them apart:

“It was a new thing and it destroyed us. That was part of what destroyed us was the outside energy that was coming at us. And we loved each other. It was hard. It felt, at times, unfair, but neither one of us is that person to be like, ‘Woe is me.’ So we were like, well, ‘We just got to dust it off and keep it moving.’ I think, in the weirdest way, that it motivated both of us to then become and do the things that we wound up doing, which is going into hyper-gear. He went into hyper-gear and I went into hyper-gear. But not together. We had to do it separately.”

She continued, “He went on to start directing, win his Oscar, do his second Oscar, do his thing where people had written him off in a way. The same thing with me. It was just like people were like, ‘Her music career’s over. She’s this, she’s that.’ You know what I mean? I wasn’t getting movies. I had to power my way back. I had to work and work. I got divorced and I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll do the reality show. I’ll do the television show. I’ll do the single. I’ll do this.’ And it was just, ‘Okay, I’m going to go on tour for the first time.’ All these things with two babies. It fueled us in a weird way that we felt we had to prove ourselves again.”

On falling back in love with Affleck:

“I think now that we’re older, we realize, it’s much more clear, because even in Then when we felt that way, now we know. Now, we know. And there is no questions and there is no kind of like, ‘Well, let’s see how this goes.’ Like, ‘Nope, it’s me and you. That’s it. All the way, till the end. That’s it. It’s going to be us.’

Zane Lowe asks, “Was it quick? When you came together again and realized that the love was still….”

“Immediate? That was immediate,” says Lopez Affleck.

Lowe comments, “‘We’re not wasting any more time.’”

Lopez Affleck says, “We’re not; we know. We had our kids and we had to tread lightly and carefully so they could come along with us…. Because they didn’t live those years before. And they’re like, ‘Wow, they’ve known each other forever.’ And that’s it. We did know each other forever, and we had to live these separate paths and we did other beautiful things and we had these amazing children. But when we came back together and the universe and God and, as it would have it.… Once we got whole enough and complete enough and loved ourselves enough and could stand on our own two feet really completely, as the universe would have it, we were brought into each other’s lives again. And it was a crack in the clouds and that song came through and it was like, ‘Boom, that’s it.’ And we were both very sure.”

Why Jennifer Lopez stopped performing songs from This Is Me…Then:

“It was so painful after we broke up. Once we called off that wedding 20 years ago, it was the biggest heartbreak of my life. I honestly felt like I was going to die. It sent me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I just couldn’t get it right. But now, 20 years later, it does have a happy ending. It has the most ‘would never happen in Hollywood’ ending. ‘That would never happen. We’re not going to write that because nobody would believe it’ ending. It’s funny because when me and Ben got back together, he was like, ‘You never performed the songs. You never did “I’m Glad.” You never did this. You never did that.’ I was like, ‘You’re right. It was painful.’ It was a part of me then that I had to put away to move on and survive. It was a survival tactic, for sure.”

Photo: Getty

On This Is Me…Now:

“We captured me at this moment in time when I was reunited with the love of my life and we decided we were going to be together forever. The whole message of the album then is this love exists. This is a real love. Now I think what the message of the album is very much if you were wondering if you have, like me at times, lost hope, almost given up: Don’t. Because true love does exist and some things do last forever and that’s real. I want to put that message out into the world and that does take a lot of vulnerability. But I couldn’t stop myself and some parts of it scare me. And I think parts of it scare Ben too. He’s like, ‘Oh, do you really want to say all this stuff?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know how else to do it, baby.’”

Ben Affleck is her biggest fan.

“He loves that album. He loves that music. He knows all of the words. You know what I mean? It’s crazy. He also was with me while I was creating it. You know what it is to make an album. You’re listening to the demos in the car. You’re listening to the mixes. ‘I wrote this today. What do you think of this?’ It was that over and over again for two years while we were together, two-and-a-half years that we were together. He knows it so well and he loves it so much. He’s my biggest fan, which is awesome, and supporter. When he came back into my life again, the same thing happened where I felt so inspired and so overtaken with emotion that it was just pouring out of me.”

Originally published in Glamour.com

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