Jennifer Lopez has revealed her true feelings after her partner Ben Affleck’s highly publicised comments about his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, in a recent interview.
The singer and songwriter cleared the air after a rumoured account of her angered reaction spread through international media outlets.
It came after Affleck said he felt “trapped” in his marriage to Garner in an interview with Howard Stern last week.
Affleck received considerable backlash for saying his relationship with Garner drove him to alcohol to cope, and that he’d still be an alcoholic if their marriage had not ended.
Lopez set the record straight on Monday, saying, “This story is simply not true”.
“It is not how I feel,” Lopez told People magazine, who rekindled her relationship with the Batman star earlier this year.
Lopez and Affleck made headlines when they started dating 17 years ago, becoming one of Hollywood’s most talked-about couples.
The pair, dubbed “Bennifer” by entertainment outlets, dated for 18 months and were engaged in 2002, before their initial breakup in 2004.
“I couldn’t have more respect for Ben as a father, a co-parent and a person,” Lopez said.
In a subsequent interview, Affleck acknowledged his comments on the Howard Stern Show made him come off as “the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy”.
He told Jimmy Kimmel Live he “would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mum”.
Affleck told Kimmel he tried to articulate his relationship with Garner, and “how much we respect each other and cared about each other and cared about our kids and put them first”.
People, quoting a source “close to the couple”, said the pair was “in a really great space and really happy”, and that Lopez had been fully supportive of Affleck.
Affleck said in the Stern interview he was not happy in his marriage with Garner, which began in 2005. But he couldn’t leave because of his children.
“I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’” he said.
“What I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
