Looking back, many stars warned Jennifer Lopez about her second act with Ben Affleck.
After the 55-year-old star filed for divorce from Affleck after two years of marriage on Tuesday, a conversation between Lopez and Jane Fonda has resurfaced.
In the Prime video documentary, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” Fonda told Lopez, “I want you to know that — I don’t entirely know why — but I feel invested in you and Ben and I really, really, really want this to work.”
Once upon a time, Fonda played the role of Lopez’s disapproving mother-in-law-to-be in the 2005 romantic comedy “Monster-in-Law;” however, in real life, she had some reservations about the rekindled romance.
“However, this is my concern,” Fonda explained. “Like, it feels too much like you’re trying to prove something instead of just living it. You know, every other photograph is the two of you kissing and the two of you hugging.”
Lopez laughed off her longtime friend, reassuring the 86-year-old, “That’s just us living our life.”
But the “On the Floor” singer still understood where Fonda was coming from.
“She’s very protective of me,” Lopez shared, “and she felt like ‘You’re putting yourself out there to get beat up again.’”
So protective, that ahead of filming her scenes as Sagittarius in “This Is Me…Now,” Fonda had a stern discussion with Lopez about Affleck’s behavior, including paparazzi pictures that showed the 52-year-old appearing sad alongside his wife at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
“I get real scared,” the fitness guru started, “you know, with all that s–t about the Grammys and he looked unhappy and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, what’s happening?’”
But Lopez quickly shook off her concerns, adding, “Nothing. He was like, ‘It’s like I’ve become the symbol of the beleaguered man.’”
Meanwhile, Fonda also spoke with the longtime manager of the JLo Beauty founder, Benny Medina.
“I believe that everyone in the entire world is pulling for this relationship and this love,” Jane had said to Medina. “And the idea of how you present that is so sacrosanct, is so important that it should be handled in a way that you aren’t overly flaunting it, so much so that it creates any form of criticism or resentment. My biggest concern is that when critics or people sort of come at her in any way.”
But Fonda isn’t the only celebrity to weigh in on Lopez’s whirlwind romance with Affleck.
“The View” co-host Joy Behar didn’t hold back in May when referring to Lopez’s recent appearance on the morning talk show. “Not that we want to gossip about people. We don’t, because we’re talking about a friend of the show,” she said.
But that didn’t stop the 81-year-old.
“When you go around shouting your love from the rooftops, it gets tricky when things don’t go well. My advice is keep your mouth shut,” Behar added.
“I don’t even tell [my second husband] Steve I love him in public,” she continued. “I don’t say it in private either, but still. Telling everybody how much you love each other and writing it on Instagram and on Facebook, and then you get a divorce and everybody says ‘Oh, you see!?’”
And once news of Lopez and Affleck’s divorce hit, Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes recalled a conversation they had with their former “Good Morning America” co-anchor.
On Wednesday’s episode of their “Amy & T.J.” podcast, they shared that they were on air alongside anchor George Stephanopoulos for Lopez and Affleck’s wedding day.
And it turns out he saw the split coming.
“You came in and you were like, ‘This is such a great story. 17 years in the making,’” Robach said to Holmes, noting that they both thought that Lopez and Affleck’s relationship was a “fairytale” at the time.
“We were excited, like genuinely happy for the two of them,” she continued. “George Stephanopoulos, however, rolled his eyes and said, ‘I give it six months,’ or something to that effect. I mean, it was probably the correct way to look at it.”
Holmes, however, disagreed with Stephanopoulos’ opinion.
“We talk about everybody loves a love story, but then we have a very difficult time being happy for people who are in love,” he shared. “That turns us off to see somebody else so happy.”
“And then we get so invested and almost there’s glee in someone else’s demise and that pain,” Holmes told listeners. “Somebody who said, ‘I’ll give it six months,’ might be [saying now], ‘I told you.’ We can sit back and say, ‘Ha ha.’ I hate that mindset.”
As fans may recall, this wasn’t the first time Lopez and Affleck tried to make a romance work. The pair first began dating in 2002 only to announce their breakup in 2004. Both stars married and had kids with other people but ultimately rekindled their flame in 2021.
Affleck popped the question with an 8.5-carat radiant-cut green diamond set on a platinum band. The “Air” director even engraved a special message inside the sparkler.
“This one he put ‘not.going.anywhere’ because that’s how he would sign his emails when we started talking again,” Lopez told Apple Music One’s Zane Lowe in 2022 about her second engagement. “Like, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.’”
She later recalled the proposal in her newsletter that same year.
“It was nothing fancy at all, but it was the most romantic thing I could’ve ever imagined … just a quiet Saturday night at home, two people promising to always be there for each other,” Lopez wrote at the time. “Green has always been my lucky color and now, for sure, it always will be.”
The Grammy winner filed for divorce from Affleck in Los Angeles County Superior Court on the anniversary of their second wedding ceremony.
The former couple said, “I do” in July 2022 at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas before tying the knot for a second time one month later at Affleck’s estate in Riceboro, Georgia.
Affleck’s three kids — Violet, 18, Seraphina, 15, and Samuel, 12, whom he shares with ex-wife Jennifer Garner — and Lopez’s 16-year-old twins — Emme and Max with ex-husband Marc Anthony — have continued to stay close.
The blended family has even attended limited family events together, including Lopez spending time with Violet in the Hamptons earlier this summer.
