Jennifer Lopez covers the March issue of Rolling Stone to promote Marry Me, the movie and the album. She is going all out for the promotion – I think Marry Me looks like a cheeseball rom-com but I’ll admit, I want to see it. The Marry Me album is just that… songs from J.Lo and Maluma from the movie. Jennifer has always wanted to be an album alongside a movie, so here we go. I went into the RS interview expecting a lot of stuff about Ben Affleck. She plays those cards close to the vest, but it’s still a great interview. It’s an interview about work, about expectations, about the racism she’s faced throughout her career, about her many trailblazing successes and how she still feels like an underdog (and I believe she is). You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
On Affleck: “I’m trying not to say too much… I’m really happy. I don’t want to say anything else. I won’t talk about it a lot. We’ve both grown. We’re the same, and we’re different. And that’s what’s nice. Yeah … having a second chance at real love … yeah…. Like I said, we learned a lot. We know what’s real, what’s not real. So it’s just — the game has changed. Again, I’m trying not to say too much.”
Her Marry Me character: “There’s a lot about [Kat] that only somebody like me could understand, right? I had to keep reminding myself: You know what it’s like to be onstage in front of an arena full of people and something embarrassing happens. That’s happened to you. What do you do? What does it feel like when it all falls apart and you go home and you’re on the TV and they’re making fun of you as if it’s not painful? How does that feel? You know what? You’ve cried in a puddle on the floor too. That’s what it feels like. Or going underwater at that point where you feel like you’re drowning, suffocating in your own decisions that you know are not the right ones.”
Her mother would slap her around: “It was that type of mentality: That’s how you keep kids in line. That’s how they were raised, and that’s how I was raised. Listen, my mom was also a fun mom. My mom was also the mom who got me into musicals and introduced me to all kinds of music. I am an entertainer because of my mom. But I’m also able to survive the things I’ve survived in this business because my mom was tough. I don’t think she could realize what she was preparing me for, but she did.”
Always an underdog: “I think I’m an underdog. I always feel like I was scrapping from the bottom. Always. I always felt like I wasn’t the one that was supposed to be in the room. That’s part of being Puerto Rican and from the Bronx and a woman. You know what I mean? All of that stuff. Not being born into a family with money. Not knowing anybody in the business. I just went out there and said, ‘F–k it. I’m going to just try. I’m going to try to get in here.’”
People were so racist to her during the first Bennifer go-around: “It was brutal. It was brutal. It’s one of those things that you bury very deeply so you can move on and get about your business.” She was able to compartmentalize, until eventually she wasn’t. “It’s funny because Ben and I were together, and we were so in love. It was one of the happiest times of my life. But also, there was this other thing happening where we were being criticized, and it really destroyed our relationship from the inside out, because we were just too young to understand at that time what were really the most important things in life.”
Her messy love life: “When I was in my forties, it was like, ‘Well, you’re not really loving yourself. You’re allowing things to happen in your life where you’re overachieving in your work, and your personal life …’” She pauses. “‘Is not…’” She trails off again. “And it fueled my artistic life, which is great in a lot of ways, because it made me want to overachieve. It made me want to feel better. It made me want to do better and be successful and be better as an artist and grow, and I have. But also, you just want to feel good in your life.”
She still isn’t considered for gritty, hard-hitting parts. “I don’t even know half the movies when they come out at the end of the year. I have the top agents in the world, but [those projects] don’t come to me.”
She feels a disconnect within the industry at times: “It’s just 20, 25 years of people going, ‘Well, she’s not that great. She’s pretty and she makes cute music, but it’s not really this and that.’ You know, I think I’ve done some nice work over the years, some really nice work. But there is a club that I just wasn’t a part of. And I always acted like, ‘Yeah, I’m good. I’m fine. I’m OK.’ But it hurts to not be included. I don’t know if I will ever be. There is an inner circle, like, ‘We are the great artists.’ And then there’s the pop artists.”
[From Rolling Stone]
RS talks about Hustlers, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe and SAG Award but was snubbed at the Oscars. You can say, oh, that was because it was a movie directed by a woman about working class women who hustled and robbed wealthy men, the Academy was never going to like it. But it felt personal to Jennifer and I think it was personal. And yes, her success was and is undeniable, but I completely understand how and why she still feels like that Fly Girl hustling to make it, hustling to get to the next level, the elite club where she gets the good scripts and the industry recognition. Where she won’t be treated as the maid.
Something else she mentions in this piece was that “It wasn’t even that long ago that she was basically broke.” Her twins were toddlers, she was divorcing Marc Anthony and she was over 40. No one was buying her albums, no one would hire her for anything and even her business manager told her she couldn’t get work at that moment. She ended up going on American Idol and relaunching herself and working her way to the top all over again.
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Cover & IG courtesy of Rolling Stone.
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