Ben Affleck Says He’d ‘Love to Work With’ Jennifer Garner Again Despite ‘Animals’ Exit

Years after their divorce, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner nearly played a married couple in the thriller Animals. Affleck co-wrote, directed, and starred in the film, and he thought his ex-wife would be perfect in the role of his character’s wife. Garner said that she did not want to do this. Still, Affleck has hopes to work with her again in the future.

Jennifer Garner did not want to play Ben Affleck’s wife in ‘Animals’

Affleck directed the thriller Animals and believed his ex-wife would be perfect in a leading role. At the time, Matt Damon was going to star, and she would play his wife.

“I thought, God, Jen Garner would be amazing for this role,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “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. I thought, well, we can coordinate our schedules around it.”

He believed that the role was a fantastic opportunity for Garner.

“She can bring something interesting that she hasn’t [done], that I kind of know she can do, that I don’t think she had a chance to do in one movie.”

Unfortunately, though, the project stalled when he learned about the movie Highest 2 Lowest. 

“We get very close to shooting, and then somebody said to me, ‘Hey, you know, there’s this other movie that Spike [Lee] and Denzel [Washington] are doing that’s about a kidnapping,” Affleck said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, s***.’”

Affleck said he didn’t want anyone to think he made a “competing version” of the same film, so they ultimately decided to pull the plug on the film. Several months later, though, Affleck found that he was still thinking about the movie, and wanted to move forward with it. At that point, though, Matt Damon was working on The Odyssey. Affleck decided to step into the lead role himself. Garner did not want to play his wife in a movie about a struggling marriage, though.

“I talked to Jen, and she was like, ‘We don’t wanna do that. You just get baggage.’”

Instead, Kerry Washington will play Affleck’s wife.

Ben Affleck said he would love to work with Jennifer Garner again

Though they didn’t team up on Animals, Affleck hopes that they get the chance to work together again. They last acted alongside each other in the 2003 film Daredevil.

“I would love to work with her, frankly,” he said. “She’s fabulous, and we’re really good friends, and I’m profoundly grateful to her, and we have a great thing. I still would wanna work with her in the future, but what you don’t wanna do is take the audience’s baggage and have it work against you, you know?”

The former couple remains on good terms

While Affleck and Garner’s marriage didn’t last, they have remained on good terms after their divorce.

“Of course this is not what I imagined when I ran down the beach [at our wedding], but it is where I am,” she told Vanity Fair in 2016. “We still have to help each other get through this. He’s still the only person who really knows the truth about things. And I’m still the only person that knows some of his truths.”

Garner said that they both agreed that they needed to maintain a friendly relationship for the sake of their children.

“It’s not Ben’s job to make me happy,” she said. “The main thing is these kids — and we’re completely in line with what we hope for them. Sure, I lost the dream of dancing with my husband at my daughter’s wedding. But you should see their faces when he walks through the door. And if you see your kids love someone so purely and wholly, then you’re going to be friends with that person.”