Ben Affleck says he knows media scrutiny comes with being a high-profile actor, but that recent headlines about his comments on his divorce from Jennifer Garner, his alcoholism and their co-parenting are “wrong.”
The Tender Bar star spoke about the recent news cycle dedicated to his personal life while appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Wednesday night. There to promote the new film directed by George Clooney, Affleck was speaking about how the film’s themes around family deeply resonate with him.
That’s when the actor broached the coverage around a recent interview, where he talked about his split from Garner, the role alcohol played in it and how he approaches co-parenting. Affleck noted that he first began to see some things, including what he calls “clickbait” headlines, on Twitter before looking into what the stories were saying.
Related Stories
“They had literally taken the conversation that I had had for two hours and made it seem as if I was doing the exact opposite of what I said,” Affleck told Kimmel about the interview on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show. “I had gone on and said how much we respect each other and cared about each other, and cared about our kids and put them first and went through our stuff. And they said that I had blamed my ex-wife for my alcoholism and that I was trapped.”
During his lengthy interview on Tuesday, Affleck told Stern, “We had a marriage that didn’t work, this happens,” before calling Garner someone ”I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer. And we said, ’You know what? We don’t want that.’”
Affleck went on to say, “Ultimately, we tried, we tried, we tried because we had kids. And both of us felt like we don’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage,” noting that they would probably be “at each other’s throats.”
He then added, “I probably [would] still be drinking. You know, like, it was just part of why I started drinking alcohol was I was trapped. You know, I was like, I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy. What do I do? And what I did was like drink a bottle of scotch and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
Affleck charged on the late night show that the piece he was referring to had made him out to be “the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy,” which ultimately hurt his feelings, but not just because it was about him. The Last Duel star and co-writer acknowledged that as a celebrity, he understands he’s in the public eye, even pointing to how he’d become a meme as “sad Batman.”
The issue, the actor told Kimmel, was how the reporting focused on his kids. “Really, [if] it’s about my kids, I got to just draw a line,” Affleck said, stating that the way the headlines framed him is “not true” and that he doesn’t believe what had been insinuated about his feelings toward Garner.
“It’s the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe. And I would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mom,” Affleck explained. “Even being the subject of that is sort of the cost of doing business a little bit as an actor, but like, not with my kids. Don’t do that. It’s wrong. It hurts me and my family.”
Despite his issues with the reporting around the interview, Affleck said that he was “really happy” with how his conversation with Stern went, and the general experience of sitting down to discuss these issues in a “longform, in-depth, two-hour interview.”
“Because the movie is about family and all this stuff that’s meaningful to me, we talked a lot about my family, divorce, alcoholism and struggling with real things,” Affleck told Kimmel. “How you have to be accountable and loving, and how I work with my ex-wife and how I’m so proud of the way that we work together for our kids to the best that we can for them.”
He concluded, “I was really happy with it. I thought I should do more honest, exploratory, self-evaluating things.”
