Ben Affleck publicly praised Jennifer Lopez as “incredible” as the former couple reunited on Monday night at the New York premiere of her new musical film Kiss of the Spider Woman, an appearance that doubled as a producer’s salute to his lead actor and a clear signal that the pair intend to keep professional commitments front and center following their divorce earlier this year. Addressing guests inside the theater before the screening, Affleck said his goal with Artists Equity—the company he co-founded with Matt Damon—was to “empower great artists and tell moving stories,” adding of the project, “in this movie, we did all of that,” before turning to Lopez with the words, “you’re incredible.” Lopez, introducing the film moments later, thanked him for showing up and said the movie “wouldn’t have been made without Ben and without Artists Equity.”
On the red carpet, Affleck expanded on the tribute in an interview, calling Lopez’s turn “the kind of role [she was] born to play” and stressing how much labor sits beneath the film’s glossy finish. “She’s amazing in the movie. I just can’t wait for the audiences to see the movie. I’m as proud of this movie as any that I’ve ever been involved with,” he said, as cameras captured the former spouses smiling together for photographers. Lopez, who has described the shoot as a lifeline during a difficult personal stretch, repeated that the production would not have reached opening night without Affleck’s backing, credit she has also given in recent interviews.
Affleck’s appearance was not billed in advance, and the moment he stepped onstage to introduce the screening drew a brief stir in the room before he pivoted deliberately to the project, praising director Bill Condon’s “amazing job” and, in a lighter aside, joking with co-star Tonatiuh about “lifelong stardom” ahead. Outside the auditorium, his presence read less as a surprise cameo than as a producer doing the expected work of shepherding a film he helped bankroll through its public launch; inside, it read as something else too, a clear vote of confidence in a performance Lopez has said she has been “waiting for… [her] whole life.”
The reunion also unfolded in small, unscripted beats that underscored an amicable tone. At one point, as Lopez spoke to an entertainment outlet on the press line, Affleck stepped in with a smile to ask for a quick photo together before they split off again to finish separate interviews. Elsewhere on the carpet he told another crew, “I wouldn’t dream of not being here,” framing the evening as a straightforward act of support for the film and for a colleague whose work he said audiences would soon judge for themselves. The brief interludes furnished images that raced across social feeds within minutes, while the quotes anchored a narrative that stayed mostly inside the four walls of the premiere: a producer praising his star, an ex-wife thanking an ex-husband, and both keeping the focus on the movie.
Kiss of the Spider Woman, which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday, Oct. 10, adapts the Tony-winning 1992 musical by John Kander, Fred Ebb and Terrence McNally from Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel. Condon’s film, which premiered at Sundance in January, centers on the bond between Valentin, a political prisoner played by Diego Luna, and Molina, a window dresser portrayed by Tonatiuh, as Molina retells a Hollywood fantasia starring his favorite silver-screen diva, Ingrid Luna, played by Lopez. Early festival screenings emphasized Lopez’s triple-threat workload in a role that braids torch-song glamour with mid-century movie pastiche; Monday’s premiere pushed that case from a stage where the film’s lead and one of its producers were both present to put their names to it.
Affleck’s remarks inside the theater were consistent with how he framed the movie outside it. He told one outlet on the carpet that Lopez “really does it all in this movie,” ticking through the demands of singing, dancing and screen acting across intersecting layers of story-within-a-story, and cast the night as a culmination of what Artists Equity is supposed to facilitate: a package where talent participates and where producers can “work with the best directors in the world and the best… material.” In that framing, the red-carpet tableau was not about old headlines but about a business model and a film arriving on schedule after a year of development, production, festival positioning and distribution deals.
Lopez’s language about Affleck’s role has been equally direct. In televised promotion ahead of the premiere, she said of the project, “If it wasn’t for Ben, the movie wouldn’t have [gotten] made,” a line she repurposed onstage Monday night in shorter form as she acknowledged his producers’ credit and the resources that came with it. The statement also squared with her account that the production served as a stabilizing force while her private life shifted, a point she has made while declining to linger on divorce questions and redirecting interviews back to the work at hand.
That careful focus did not preclude a candid timeline. Lopez and Affleck finalized their divorce in January, less than three years after marrying in Las Vegas and then in Georgia in 2022. They first met two decades earlier, became engaged in 2002 and called off their 2003 wedding before separating in 2004; they reconciled publicly in 2021. Monday’s appearance, then, was both familiar—two longtime professionals exchanging public praise—and unusual, a first shared red carpet since the legal end of a marriage that has threaded through both of their careers at intervals for more than 20 years.
For the film itself, the creative stakes were spelled out by those who made it. Condon—whose credits include Dreamgirls and Chicago (as screenwriter)—has said the Spider Woman role asks for a particular kind of star, one who can inhabit the artifice of old Hollywood while playing a contemporary fable about escapism and survival. Affleck and Lopez pushed the same idea from different angles: the producer talking about a “moving story” realized by a trusted director and a lead actor, the actor positioning the part as the kind of glamour-inflected challenge that called on the full range of skills honed across stage and screen. The result of that alignment, they argued, is on the screen rather than in the photo pit.
The night’s guest list strengthened the sense of a professional reunion built to serve the movie’s launch. Luna, who plays Valentin, joined Tonatiuh and other cast members in greeting the crowd. Affleck, 53, made the case for the film from a producer’s vantage; Lopez, 56, made it from the perspective of the performer carrying the show’s most stylized persona. For all the public’s long memory of their relationship, both kept their comments in the present tense of an opening week, the common language of a premiere where the immediate task is to move audiences from curiosity to tickets.
Nevertheless, the quotes that traveled furthest crystallized what Affleck told Lopez and how Lopez answered him. The headline word was “incredible,” delivered in the room to the star of the film as part of a broader statement about empowering artists and backing directors. The response was a clean attribution of credit: the film would not exist without him and without Artists Equity. Between those poles—producer’s praise, star’s thanks—the evening closed its loop, an exchange that explained why the pair were there together at all.
Outside the building, the reunion yielded at least one clip that burnished the evening’s tone. As Lopez spoke to a television crew, Affleck leaned in to ask if they could grab a picture, a brief interruption that ended with both looking into a photographer’s lens before resuming their separate rounds. Online, the moment read as a polite, almost procedural gesture; in person, it looked like what it was—a producer making sure his film’s star and his film’s backers captured the shot every premiere needs. A separate interview fragment caught him saying, “I wouldn’t dream of not being here,” a line that parsed as both personal courtesy and professional duty.
If the sight of the two sharing a carpet carried inevitable baggage, the discourse inside the hall did not linger on it. Affleck’s introduction praised Condon and the cast and tipped his hat to the Artists Equity team; Lopez’s remarks briefed the crowd on the film they were about to see and reserved her only personal note for the acknowledgment that the project exists because a producer said yes. The division of labor—producer talks production, star talks performance—tracked with the rest of the evening: they posed, they spoke, they let the feature do the rest.
By the time the house lights dimmed, the facts were straightforward. A film that bowed at Sundance is in theaters this week; its lead actor and one of its producers reunited publicly for the first time since their divorce to launch it; and the words on record are unambiguous. “You’re incredible,” Affleck told Lopez, after praising the director and the ensemble. “This movie wouldn’t have been made without Ben and without Artists Equity,” Lopez told the room in reply. Whether audiences echo those judgments will become clear at the box office and in the quieter metrics of a word-of-mouth musical. For now, the premiere served its primary function: it put the film—and the performances that sustain it—front and center, with its producer and its star exactly where opening night expects them to be.