(C) Jennifer Lopez Recalls Meeting Ben Affleck on Gigli Set, Says She’s ‘Open’ to Doing Another Movie with Him

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in 2003’s Gigli. PHOTO: COLUMBIA/REVOLUTION STUDIOS/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK

Jennifer Lopez is not shutting the door on making another movie with her husband Ben Affleck.

Lopez, 54, appeared in a Variety video interview published Tuesday in which she revisited notable lines she spoke in movies over the years. Along the way, she was presented with a famous line of hers from the 2003 movie Gigli, where she and Affleck, 51, first met.

“The first time meeting him on that film was at the read-through,” Lopez recalled. “They did a read-through of the whole thing and I remember kind of just walking in and I think he was outside, smoking a cigarette and I saw him and we just talked for like a minute and then I sat down and we did the read-through.”

“I don’t remember a whole bunch more about it, but I remember being on the set with him every day and loving it,” she shared.

Lopez was married to her second husband Cris Judd at the time she and Affleck met. She filed for divorce from Judd in July 2002; Lopez and Affleck were engaged by the end of that year, but the pair split in January 2004.

After Gigli, Lopez and Affleck also filmed 2004’s Jersey Girl together, but they have not costarred in a feature film since, even after they rekindled their relationship in 2021 and married in 2022.

Justin Bartha, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck in 2003’s Gigli.MOVIESTORE/SHUTTERSTOCK

“I don’t know, in the right thing, maybe, in the right thing,” Lopez shared with the outlet when asked if she and Affleck would ever make another movie together. “I mean, we love working together and being together, so maybe.”

Although Gigli sparked Affleck and Lopez’s relationship, the movie bombed at the box office and holds highly negative reviews from critics and audiences alike.

Affleck himself reflected on his experience making Gigli during a conversation with his longtime friend Matt Damon for Entertainment Weekly in February 2022, stating at the time the movie taught him “how much everything around a movie sort of dictates the way people see it.”

Ben Affleck (left), Justin Bartha, Jennifer Lopez on the set of ‘Gigli’.RALPH JR NELSON/COLUMBIA/REVOLUTION/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK

“It doesn’t work, by the way. It’s a sort of horse’s head in a cow’s body,” he said of the film at the time. “And the studio at the time, because I had begun having this relationship with Jennifer Lopez, which was selling a lot of magazines and appeared to generate a lot of enthusiasm, they just predictably latched onto, ‘They want a romantic comedy. They want the two of them together. More of that!’ “

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez on the set of ‘Gigli’ on Jan. 10, 2003.BAUER-GRIFFIN/GC IMAGES

In that conversation, Affleck noted that Gigli‘s commercial failures helped him realize he wanted to direct films himself and that he met Lopez while making the movie.

“Jennifer and I happened to be together at a time where the whole industry of celebrity journalism, if you want to call it that, sort of exploded,” he added. “But I thought, ‘S—, this is really not how I had hoped to go, where I’m going to be, what? Famous for being an assh— or a failure and not able to work?’ “