Ben Affleck Speaks Out on Jennifer Garner Divorce Comment Backlash and Remarks Being Taken Out of Context
Ben Affleck devoted part of his Jimmy Kimmel Live! interview last night to setting the record straight after comments about Jennifer Garner, their divorce, and his alcoholism were taken out of
context from his Howard Stern interview this week and trended on social media.
Affleck had spoken to Stern about how the two had tried to work out their marriage for the sake of their children and ultimately decided it didn’t work. Some media outlets and users on Twitter honed in on comments he made about how he would still be drinking if he remained in that marriage.
“They said I had blamed my ex-wife [Jennifer Garner] for my alcoholism and that I was ‘trapped’ in this marriage, just made me out to be the worst, most insensitive, stupid awful guy,” Affleck told Kimmel. “And I—look, I know people do this. I get it, me, I’m happy to be sad Batman, I’m happy to be Dunkin’ Donuts and the memes... Really, like, if it’s about my kids, I gotta just draw a line. I want to be clear: That’s not true. I don’t believe that, it’s the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe, and I would never want my kids to think that I would ever say a bad word about their mom. It hurts my feelings, man.”
Here’s Affleck’s previous remarks to Stern in fuller context:
On his divorce from Garner, Affleck said, via Vanity Fair: “Everything you read [about the divorce] was bullsh*t. The truth was we took our time, we made our decision. We grew apart. We had a marriage that didn’t work. This happens. She’s somebody I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer.”
“Ultimately, we tried, we tried, we tried because we had kids, but both of us felt like we didn’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage,” he continued. “We did it amicably. We did our best. Did we have moments of tension? Did we have disagreements over custody? Was stuff difficult for us? Did we get angry? Yes, but fundamentally it was always underpinned with a respect. I knew she was a good mom. I always hoped she knew I was a good dad. I knew I was.”
And on his drinking, he said, via Page Six, “We probably would’ve ended up at each other’s throats. I probably still would’ve been drinking. Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped. 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 [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
To Kimmel, Affleck explained that his interview with Stern was two hours long, and it being taken out of context was not okay given the remarks were about Garner and his family.
He said in full: “I had a chance to do an interview with a friend of yours, Howard Stern. It was really cool, longform, in-depth, you know, it was a two-hour interview and because the movie [The Tender Bar] is about family and all this stuff that’s meaningful to me, we talked a lot about my family and divorce and alcoholism and struggling with real things and how you have to be accountable and loving and how I work with my ex-wife [Garner], and I’m so proud of the way we work together for our kids and do the best that we can for them. Honestly, I was really happy with it... I was like, ‘wow, I should do more honest, exploratory, self-evaluating things. And then I started seeing all this stuff come up on Twitter, and I was like, what is this?’ And I sort of researched through it and saw that one of these websites had done the clickbait thing of ‘you won’t believe what he said; click on this; come to our site.’ And I looked on it and they had literally taken the conversation that I had had for two hours and made it seem as if I was saying the exact opposite of what I had said. I had gone on and said how much we respect each other, cared about each other, cared about our kids and put them first and went through our stuff, and they said I had blamed my ex-wife for my alcoholism and that I was ‘trapped’ in this marriage, just made me out to be the worst, most insensitive, stupid awful guy. And I—look, I know people do this. I get it, me, I’m happy to be sad Batman, I’m happy to be Dunkin’ Donuts and the memes, I understand the—you have to get married to Jimmy Kimmel sometime. Really, like, if it’s about my kids, I gotta just draw a line. I want to be clear: That’s not true. I don’t believe that, it’s the exact opposite of who I am, what I believe, and I would never want my kids to think that I would ever say a bad word about their mom. It hurts my feelings, man.”
He added that the media takes things out of context “occasionally.”
“You can have the most pleasant, honest, real conversation and be kind of vulnerable and no matter what you say, someone can just [be like], ‘here are the key words,’ and put it all out there,” he said.
“Even being the subject of that is just kind of the cost of doing business a little bit as an actor, but like not with my kids,” Affleck added. “Don’t do that. It’s wrong. It hurts me. It hurts my family. Stop that.”
You can watch his full Kimmel interview below: