Jane Fonda. Kayla Oaddams/Getty Images
Jane Fonda didn’t hold back when giving Jennifer Lopez advice on documenting her love story with husband Ben Affleck.
When Lopez, 54, first asked Fonda, 86, to appear in her forthcoming narrative musical film This Is Me … Now: A Love Story, which will be released on Friday, February 16th, along with Lopez’s ninth studio album, This Is Me … Now, Fonda had reservations.
“I want you to know that I don’t entirely know why, but I feel invested in you and Ben, and I really want this to work,” Fonda says in the upcoming documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which follows the making of the album and its aforementioned accompanying film, per a Variety piece published on Tuesday, February 13.
She continues: “However, this is absurd. 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.”
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Lopez laughs off the comment, noting, “That’s just us living our life.”
Elsewhere in the documentary, Fonda recalls feeling “real scared” after seeing viral photos of Affleck, 51, looking grumpy while accompanying Lopez to the Grammy Awards in February 2023.
“He looks unhappy and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, what’s happening?’” Fonda tells Lopez, whom she’s been pals with since they costarred in 2005’s Monster-in-Law.
Lopez reassures her: “Nothing! He was like, ‘I’ve become the symbol of the beleaguered man.’”
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Despite Fonda’s hesitancy, she did eventually agree to appear in This Is Me … Now: A Love Story alongside stars including Sofia Vergara, Keke Palmer and Post Malone.
Fonda wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand Lopez’s vision for the project. The singer’s longtime producing partner, Elaine Goldsmith Thomas, also had concerns.
“I’m in New York, and she’s saying, ‘I think I’m going to finance this myself.’ I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ I don’t even know what it is. What are you doing?’ I was worried. ‘Why are you sharing your story? It’s too personal. Stop it.’ It made me uncomfortable for her,” Goldsmith Thomas told Variety.
Although Goldsmith-Thomas admitted that she was “petrified the whole time” Lopez was working on the three-part release, she now understands why Lopez needed to do it.
“I was afraid that she was telling her journey and that it would look like it was saying, ‘Here’s my journey from Ben to Ben.’ And it’s not about that. It’s about, ‘Here’s what I’ve been through for the past 20 years, and I kept walking into the same wall and blaming the wall until I started to look at myself,’” she explained.
Lopez and Affleck tied the knot in 2022 . They previously got engaged in 2002, but called off their wedding the following year. Two marriages and five children later — Lopez shares 15-year-old twins Emme and Max with ex-husband Marc Anthony while Affleck shares daughters Violet, 18, and Seraphina, 15, and son Samuel, 11, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner — the duo rekindled their romance in 2021.
This Is Me … Now: A Love Story premieres Friday, February 16, on Prime Video. The Greatest Love Story Never Told hits the streaming platform on Tuesday, February 27.