Jennifer Lopez previously said that her real-life love with Ben Affleck partially inspired the Amazon original
It’s a pre-Valentine’s Day date night for Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck!
The couple stepped out on the red carpet together for the Los Angeles premiere of her new Amazon original This Is Me…Now: A Love Story at the Dolby Theatre on Tuesday night.
Other stars at the red carpet premiere on Tuesday include Derek Hough, America Ferrera, Fat Joe and Xochitl Gomez.
This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is a musical and visual reimagining of the life events that inspired Lopez’s upcoming album This Is Me…Now, which serves as a sequel to her 2002 album This Is Me…Then.
The project —which includes cameos from stars like Trevor Noah and Jane Fonda — has been a long time in the making for Lopez, 54, who said at a press conference last week that her real-life love story with Affleck, 51, helped push her to get it done.
“I was like, ‘I don’t write, I don’t do this.’ He was like, ‘You do, you write, you direct, you produce, you choreograph, you do all the things. Start stepping into that, start owning a little bit of who you are,’” she recalled Affleck telling her.
The pair were married in July 2022, more than a year after rekindling their romance. They first dated for two years in the early 2000s before calling it quits just days before their 2004 wedding.
Their renewed romance inspired much of the direction of the film, director Dave Meyers said at the press conference, and noted one scene in particular that found her hard at work as a construction worker at a heart factory.
“Metaphorically, it is true,” Meyers said. “That stemmed from her telling me the pain that she’s been in, specifically the pain that she went through when she broke up with Ben the first time. There was a lot of honesty that was shared in that first meeting, and so the heart factory became sort of a Titanic-level meltdown, which was a metaphor for what she was giving me as far as her truth.”
Lopez and Affleck also recently starred together in a Super Bowl commercial that featured Affleck forming a boy band called the DunKings with pal Matt Damon and New England Patriots legend Tom Brady. An extended version of the ad opens with the Oscar winner asking Lopez for help developing some “beats.”
“Do you have any time today if I wanted to squeeze by and like…?” he asks. As he trails off, it’s clear his wife has no interest. “I understand,” he adds. “Jen, you know, not the only one with a dream.”
