Jennifer Lopez is following up her 2002 album, This Is Me … Then, two decades later with This Is Me … Now — and she’s thrilled that husband Ben Affleck agreed to cowrite the accompanying short film.
Lopez, 54, “wouldn’t have wished for anybody else” to work with her on the project, an insider exclusively reveals in the new issue of Us Weekly, adding, “Nobody knows her better than Ben.”
As she did with This Is Me … Then, Lopez dedicated the new album to Affleck, 51. The duo tied the knot in July 2022, 18 years after breaking off their first engagement in early 2004.
The source adds that Lopez “feels grateful” to have Affleck by her side for the film, which is described as a “visual reimagining of her publicly scrutinized love life” through the years. “He helped her feel safe to share parts of her nobody has ever known,” the insider tells Us.
Lopez did not originally plan a movie to accompany the album, but the songs inspired her to create a special visual project.
“When the music was done I just thought to myself, ‘There’s more of a story to be told here,’” she told Entertainment Tonight on Tuesday, December 5, in Los Angeles.
(R-L) Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty Images
“There’s been a bigger journey than just a love story here. And so it became a much bigger, fuller project, with an incredible message. And I realized I had to really get personal to tell it.”
Lopez went on to say that her husband is the perfect person to tell her real-life story of love and finding happiness.
“We collaborate very well together, and nobody knows my story more than he does,” she added. “So we were able to kind of sit down and really dig into it, in a way that I don’t think any other writer could’ve done with me.”
Lopez told Vogue in November 2022 that the album and the film will set the record straight about her love life.
“People think they know things about what happened to me along the way, the men I was with — but they really have no idea, and a lot of times they get it so wrong,” she said. “There’s a part of me that was hiding a side of myself from everyone. And I feel like I’m at a place in my life, finally, where I have something to say about it.”
While she referred to herself as “Mrs. Affleck” throughout the article, Affleck thinks his wife is the same person he originally fell in love with in 2002.
“There is something innately, magically kind and good and full of love at the heart of who Jennifer is,” Affleck explained. “That’s exactly the person I remember from 20 years ago. Maybe she sees all the changes she’s made, whereas when I see her, mostly I just see someone who has retained, against the odds, the thing about her that always made her the most incredible to me: a heart that seems boundless with love. She is my idea of the kind of person I want to be.”
The trailer for This Is Me … Now, which Lopez debuted last month via Instagram, revisits the couple’s first relationship, which began in 2002 after they met on the set of Gigli.
In the clip, she is seated in front of a fire while rain pours outside. She tosses a letter into the fire as she says, “When I was a little girl, when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was always … in love.” The handwritten letter — dated December 24, 2002 — turns out to be from Affleck. “Life’s tough but you’re sweet,” the note reads. “Thanks for the gift. Hope you like the flowers. You told me you could never have enough. I believe you.”
This Is Me … Now will be Lopez’s ninth studio album and her first since 2014’s A.K.A. The album and the film will both be released on February 16, 2024.
For more on Lopez and Affleck’s collaboration, pick up the new issue of Us Weekly, on stands now.