Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s onscreen reunion nearly happened, but the former couple ultimately decided their real-life history could become a distraction.Affleck revealed that he initially wanted his ex-wife to star in his upcoming Netflix thriller “Animals,” although his original plan would not have put the former spouses opposite each other.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Affleck explained that Matt Damon was initially expected to play the movie’s lead, Mark Kimball, while Garner would portray his wife, Abigail. “I thought, God, Jen Garner would be amazing for this role,” Affleck recalled.
However, a series of production changes eventually put Affleck himself in the lead role and raised a new question: Would audiences be able to separate Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s real history from a fictional marriage already falling apart?
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner Had a Practical Reason to Reunite
Affleck’s interest in casting Garner wasn’t only about her acting. The former couple, who share three children, follow a parenting schedule that Affleck believed could make filming together especially convenient.
“It also has the added benefit of, like, both of us will see our kids more because we do a week and a week and back and forth,” he told EW. “I thought, well, we can coordinate our schedules around it.” At that stage, Garner would have starred opposite Damon rather than her ex-husband. But Ben Affleck’s “Animals” project soon encountered an unexpected obstacle.
Affleck learned shortly before production was due to begin that Spike Lee and Denzel Washington were making “Highest 2 Lowest,” another movie involving a kidnapping and a similar thematic device. According to Affleck, filming was only two weeks away when he decided to halt the project rather than move forward under those circumstances.
Why Ben Affleck’s ‘Animals’ Changes Complicated Garner’s Role
When Affleck eventually revived “Animals,” Damon was no longer available. He had committed to Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” leaving Affleck to take over the role of Mark himself. That meant Garner would no longer be playing Damon’s onscreen wife. She would be playing her real-life ex-husband’s wife in a movie centered partly on a deeply troubled marriage.
Affleck and Garner discussed the potential reunion and ultimately decided against it. “I talked to Jen, and she was like, ‘We don’t wanna do that. You just get baggage,’” Affleck recalled. The actor stressed that the decision wasn’t a reflection of a bad relationship between them. “I would love to work with her, frankly,” he said, calling Garner “fabulous” and describing the pair as “really good friends.”
He added that he remains “profoundly grateful” to Garner and would still like to work with her in the future. For “Animals,” however, Affleck said they didn’t want the audience’s knowledge of their history to work against the movie.
Affleck and Garner Have Shared the Screen Before
Had the “Animals” reunion happened, it would have brought Affleck and Garner back together onscreen more than two decades after their earlier collaborations. The actors appeared in 2001’s “Pearl Harbor” before playing Matt Murdock and Elektra Natchios in 2003’s “Daredevil.” They later began dating, married in 2005 and announced their separation in 2015 before finalizing their divorce in 2018.
Instead, Affleck turned to Kerry Washington for “Animals.” The “Scandal” star now plays Abigail opposite Affleck’s Mark, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose life is thrown into chaos after his son is kidnapped. As the couple confronts the crisis, problems in their marriage and secrets they have kept from each other begin to surface.
Washington told EW that she was particularly intrigued by the complexity of the couple’s relationship, describing their dynamic as “pretty horrible.” Meanwhile, Affleck hasn’t closed the door on sharing the screen with Garner again.
His comments suggest that working with his ex-wife wasn’t the concern. Instead, it was asking audiences to watch Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner portray a troubled marriage without bringing their real one into the theater. “Animals,” starring Affleck and Washington alongside Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun, Luis Gerardo Méndez and Adriana Paz, arrives in select theaters and on Netflix on Oct. 9.
