By Wonderwall.com Editors
4:51pm PST, Mar 1, 2024
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In her new documentary, Jennifer Lopez gets emotional as she recalls a relationship in which she says she was "manhandled" before she "hit rock bottom" and realized it was time to get out. Though she doesn't name the ex, the singer and actress speaks candidly, through tears, about the experience and how it affected her going forward.
It's just one of the revelations J.Lo makes on camera in Amazon Prime's "The Greatest Love Story Never Told," which draws parallels between the star's journey to success and to self-love while detailing the stumbling blocks she encountered on her way there.
Keep reading for more details about Jen's "painful" past, the stars who declined to appear in her new doc (and why), and more …
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While shooting scenes for "Rebound" from her new visual album, "This Is Me … Now: A Love Story" — the documentary follows the film's production — we see Jennifer Lopez performing a dance routine with a partner that implies a tormented if not abusive relationship.
"I'm glad that one's behind us," the singer says at one point of the scenes, per People.
"Being thrown around and manhandled like that is not fun," she explains later, speaking from inside a car after the shoot. "I was never in a relationship where I got beat up, thank God, but I've definitely been manhandled and a couple of other unsavory things … rough … disrespectful."
Jen doesn't reveal who treated her that way, but her long career in showbiz has involved plenty of high-profile relationships, in addition to her marriage to Ben Affleck.
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Jennifer Lopez's other famous partners have included Sean "Diddy" Combs (seen here with Jen at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards), former Yankees star Alex Rodriguez and singer Marc Anthony.
"There were people in my life who said, 'I loved you,' and then didn't do things that were kind of in line with the word love," Jennifer explains in her Amazon Prime documentary.
"You have to hit rock bottom, where you're in situations that are so uncomfortable and so painful that you finally go, 'I don't want this anymore.' A therapist said to me, 'What if this was your daughter? What would you do?' And it was so clear," she recalled. "I was like, I'd tell her, 'Get the f*** out of here, never look back.' But for me it was so clouded and so complicated with so much of my past and my own pain and hurt and dysfunction, that I couldn't see clearly. It was like looking through fog."
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At one point in the documentary, Jennifer Lopez chats on the phone with her close friend and producing partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas.
"More than anything, it's really a vulnerable place to be in every day," Jen says while trying to convey some of what she's up against to her friend. "That's why I go to work every day, and I'm like, 'What am I doing?'"
Despite her apparent pain, Elaine encourages J.Lo to keep pushing forward.
"It's a personal journey … that will relate to so many women who are abused," she reminds the star. "You're talking about how we accept less than we deserve."
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Jennifer Lopez's progress towards breaking the habit of "accepting less than she deserves" is a theme in the film, though she doesn't go into great detail about the three marriages that preceded her marriage to Ben Affleck.
"I'm sure people watching from the outside were like, 'What is this f****** girl's problem?!'" she jokes in the doc when talking about her pre-Ben trips down the aisle with Marc Anthony, Cris Judd and Ojani Noa.
She does go into detail while explaining why she and Ben decided to call off their initial wedding plans back in 2003: "Ben and I, we broke up three days before our wedding," she shares at one point in the film. "We had a big wedding planned — 14 ushers and bridesmaids — and three days before, we just crumbled under the pressure."
Ben, for his part, blames their split on "the massive amount of scrutiny around our private life."
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Ben Affleck also gets candid about what's made his relationship with Jennifer Lopez work this time around — and what's made him nervous about reconnecting with a woman who's built much of her brand around love songs and rom-coms.
"Getting back together, I said, 'Listen, one of the things I don't want is a relationship on social media.' Then I sort of realized it's not a fair thing to ask. It's sort of like you're going to marry a boat captain and [you're like], 'Well, I don't like the water,'" he recalls in the doc.
"We're just two people with, kind of, different approaches trying to learn to compromise."
If finding that balance was tough for Ben from the start, it didn't get easier when Jennifer started working on new music for "This Is Me … Now," which has been hailed by critics as her most "personal" album yet.
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Jennifer Lopez's so-called "bible," for example, became a source of inspiration for both the singer and the musicians with whom she collaborated.
Jennifer explains of the "bible" — a gift from Ben Affleck on their first Christmas back together, "It is every letter and every email that we wrote to each other from 20 years ago to today."
He titled it "The Greatest Love Story Never Told by Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck 2001 to 2021 … and Counting."
She soon shared it with everyone in her studio — and her colleagues promptly conferred a new nickname on the Oscar winner based on his sweet gesture.
"I was like, 'You've been showing all the musicians all these letters?'" Ben says in the film. "And they were like, 'Yeah, we call you Pen Affleck.' And I was like, 'Oh my God.'"
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In the end, it seems, "Pen Affleck" found a way through the situation.
"Jen was really inspired by this experience, which is how artists do their work," Ben Affleck says in the documentary of wife Jennifer Lopez. "I certainly do the same things, but things that are private, I have always felt, are sacred and special because, in part, they're private. So this was something of an adjustment for me."
Once he adjusted, he admits he still harbored concerns before realizing why they were unfounded.
"I don't really love being in the making of a documentary about my personal life, which is why I'm so relieved that I'm not really, it seems like I might be in this, but I'm not really," he says.
"I was worrying for no reason. The movie wasn't about me. It was about the ability to love yourself and that love story is a lot f****** harder to find than Prince Charming."
Ben wasn't the only one who worried J.Lo was making a mistake in sharing so much of her personal experiences with the world.
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Jennifer Lopez's friend and "Monster-in-Law" co-star Jane Fonda was nervous too.
"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," Jane tells Jen of Ben Affleck on a call filmed for the documentary. "However, this is my concern. 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."
Jennifer shrugs it off and laughs.
"That's just us living our life," she says.
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Speaking to the camera in another scene, Jennifer Lopez explains that her former co-star Jane Fonda is still "very protective" of her and "felt like, 'you're putting yourself out there to get beat up again.'"
Jane's concerns resurface when she thinks about photos of the couple at the Grammy Awards in which Ben's disinterested expression became the target of memes galore and gossip about the pair's relationship.
"I get real scared, you know, with all that s*** about the Grammys and he looks unhappy and I'm like, 'Oh my God, what's happening?'" Jane tells Jennifer.
"Nothing!" she replies. "He was like, 'I've become the symbol of the beleaguered man.'"
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Jennifer Lopez also reveals she got multiple "no thank you's" from fellow celebs she hoped would appear with her in the documentary.
Taylor Swift, whom Jen joined onstage during Taylor's RED tour in 2013, declined, according to Today.com. Jason Momoa, Jennifer Coolidge, Lizzo, Vanessa Hudgens, Ariana Grande and Snoop Dogg followed suit. Khloe Kardashian was another potential celebrity cameo who dropped out.
"I don't want to force anybody to do this who doesn't go, 'This is gonna be fun,'" Jennifer says in the film.
"Nobody wants to say 'no' to me, Benny. I get that," she tells her manager, Benny Medina. "But when an actor doesn't like a script, doesn't think it's good enough or is worried about it, that's what they'll say."
Jennifer, who ultimately put $20 million of her own money into the visual album, also admits in the film that the whole project made her nervous, too.
"People [are] scared, scared to put themselves out there. I get it," she says. "Took me a long time. I'm scared. I don't act like I'm scared. That's the secret to my whole f****** career."
