The couple’s converstation looked a tad tense as they hit the red carpet.
For her starring role in the action thriller The Mother, Jennifer Lopez had to get her body battle-ready to play an ex-special forces sniper aiming to rescue her kidnapped daughter. “I love to work-out and to try to stay as athletic as I can and that definitely gives you a head start for a big action movie like this. But this was a whole other level,” she tells WHO. “It was every day. It was very challenging to get to that level and learn all the fight choreography.”
Lopez (in custom sequined separates by Brunello Cucinelli) and Affleck pulled it together to pose for the cameras.
At the premiere of the Netflix flick, Lopez seemed to have engaged in some combative choreography with her husband, Ben Affleck. Video footage from the event shows the actors looking miserable while they posed on the red carpet together and testily whispering to each other. A lip reader told The Daily Mail that Affleck appeared to tell Lopez to come closer to him, leaning into her ear and saying, “Don’t worry, babe.” Lopez then tells him to “come close to me”. After striking several poses, Affleck says he’s “done” before Lopez tells him they need to “step over there” for more photos.
Affleck also seemed to be fed up with photos a day earlier when paparazzi caught the couple moodily walking towards their car after a coffee run. In a now viral video, Affleck opens the car door for his wife, but then slams it shut in anger, glaring at the photographers who caught the interaction as he walks around to the driver’s seat.
Intense public interest in the couple has long been a hurdle to their happy ending. They called off their first wedding due to media scrutiny in 2004 only to rekindle their love in 2021 before tying the knot in 2022. In March, the couple were forced to laugh off more talk of tension after they were caught in a twitchy moment at the Grammy Awards. “Listen, I have a very unhappy-looking resting face,” Affleck later joked to Jimmy Kimmel. “That’s how God made me! You don’t have to punish me for it.”
“The money is freaking Ben out”
– SOURCE
Even away from the spotlight’s glare, there are more challenges for the newlyweds, who between them have five kids. Lopez shares twins Max and Emme, 15, with her ex-husband, Marc Anthony, and Affleck is dad to Samuel, 10, Seraphina, 13, and Violet, 17, with his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner. “They are so supportive of me but, at the same time, they are not like little kids anymore,” Lopez tells WHO. “I’m dealing with being the mother of teenagers … so it’s different because they have their own experience and their own take on the world.”
The challenge of settling on a home for the couple to raise their blended family in has been dragging on for over a year, with a source telling Heat magazine that it’s Lopez who won’t pull the trigger. “Finding something absolutely perfect has become an obsession and it’s made the whole process a nightmare,” says the source. “She seems to get a kick out of looking at property after property … The money is freaking Ben out. He’s spending double what he would normally, and Jen’s looking at even more expensive places.”
Affleck has said the paps are to blame for him looking “sad or pissed off” in pictures. “Five guys are following me and shouting things, which brings a feeling out in you that is not a happy feeling.”
GRAMMYS GAFFE
“I didn’t know they were rolling. I leaned into her and I was like, ‘As soon they start rolling, I’m going to slide away,’” Affleck has explained of their tense exchange at this year’s Grammy Awards. “She goes, ‘You better f--king not leave.’ That’s a husband-and-wife thing.”
SEEING RED
The couple had a terse exchange at the Los Angeles premiere of The Mother. “I’ve gone to events and been pissed off,” Affleck previously admitted. “I’ve gone and been bored. I’ve gone to award shows and been drunk, a bunch.” ■