Ben Affleck opens up about Jennifer Lopez divorce: ‘There’s no scandal’

Ben Affleck is shutting down rumors of a dramatic split, months after his divorce from Jennifer Lopez.

The Accountant 2 star broke his silence on the end of his marriage during a wide-ranging conversation with GQ, in which he was quick to address the rampant speculation about their heavily-scrutinized relationship.

“There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue,” Affleck told the outlet. “The truth is, when you talk to somebody, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there is no: ‘This is what happened.’ It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do.”

He added, “There is no ‘So-and-so did this’ or ‘This was the big event.'”

Reiterating that there was no huge, singular issue to blame for their split, Affleck argued that the details behind their breakup would probably bore most people.

“It sounds more like a couple’s therapy session, which — you would tune out of someone else’s couple’s therapy after a while,” he pointed out. “For one thing, you start going, ‘Okay, clearly this person has got these issues. Clearly they have these issues.’ And the reason I don’t want to share that is just sort of embarrassing. It feels vulnerable.”

The former couple — best known as Bennifer — originally got together in 2002, after meeting on the set of their movie Gigli. They were engaged by November of that year, however, the wedding was postponed and in January 2004, they announced their split.

But, after marrying and divorcing others in the intervening years, the pair coupled up again in 2021, to the shock and delight of fans everywhere. They married in July 2022, but ended their relationship again just two years later. Lopez filed for divorce in August 2024 and asked that Affleck be dropped from her name.

Prior to their recent split, Affleck appeared in The Greatest Love Story Never Told, a documentary about the making of Lopez’ latest album, This Is Me… Now, which includes several songs referencing her romance with Affleck. While chatting with GQ, the actor, who admits to shying away from the more public-facing aspect of their relationship, went on to unpack his decision to appear in the doc.

“Part of it was, ‘Okay, if I’m going to participate in this, I want to try to do it in an honest way and in a way that’s interesting.’ Because I thought it was an interesting examination,” Affleck said. “There are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them. My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers. As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things.”

Affleck continued, “And so I thought, ‘Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that?’ Because… I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that.”

Reflecting on a particular quote from the doc, he recalled saying, “You don’t marry a ship captain and then say, ‘Well, I don’t like going out in the water.’ You’ve got to own what you knew going into any relationship. And I think it’s important to say that wasn’t the cause of some major fracture. It’s not like you can watch that documentary and go, ‘Oh, now I understand the issues that these two had.'”

He went on to clarify that there is no “negativity or judgement” when it comes to their different approaches to public and private life, adding, “I have nothing but respect.”

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

As for those convinced that those differences are to blame for their split, he said, “I guess there’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something. But honestly, like I said, the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.”