Jennifer Lopez was asked if she wanted Ben Affleck to become ‘Mr. Lopez’ — here’s how she reacted
Jennifer Lopez is a traditional girl at heart.
Following her July 2022 marriage to Ben Affleck, J.Lo was asked if any part of her “might want Ben to be Mr. Lopez” — and the “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” singer could only laugh at the idea.
“No! It’s not traditional,” she told Vogue in a November 2022 profile titled “How Jennifer Lopez Found Happily Ever After.” Lopez, who filed for divorce from Affleck on Tuesday, Aug. 20, made the choice to legally become Mrs. Affleck following her marriage.
“It doesn’t have any romance to it,” she added of Ben becoming “Mr. Ben Lopez.”
“It feels like it’s a power move, you know what I mean? I’m very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person.”
The question was prompted by a New York Times article published just days after her marriage, in which the paper’s Styles editor Stella Bugbee derided Lopez for adopting her husband’s surname.
“I think it’s one of the most public acts of submission that a person can perform,” the journalist said of women taking a man’s surname. “But that is especially true for celebrity women who make their money from their name recognition.”
Bugbee went one step further and proposed, “Why didn’t [Ben Affleck] become Ben Lopez? What would that have done to his ego?”
Lopez was surprised when she was told about the article.
“What? Really?” she asked. “People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez. But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we’re joined together. We’re husband and wife. I’m proud of that. I don’t think that’s a problem.
“I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that’s okay, too,” she continued. “But if you want to know how I feel about it, I just feel like it’s romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I’m just that kind of girl.”
Lopez officially revealed that she was Mrs. Affleck when she announced her marriage to the Oscar winner in her On the JLo newsletter, signing off, “With Love, Mrs. Jennifer Lynn Affleck.”
J.Lo previously said she intended to take Affleck’s last name when the pair were first engaged in the early 2000s.
In a July 18, 2003, interview with “Access Hollywood,” she was asked what her name would be after her marriage, to which she replied, “What do you think my name will be? Am I gonna change it professionally you mean? I think I’m gonna stay with Jennifer Lopez.”
“But my name will be Jennifer Affleck, obviously,” she clarified.
She added that her stationery would say “Jennifer Affleck.”
When teased by interviewer Pat O’Brien whether she would become “J.Aff” instead of “J.Lo,” the singer quipped that the name “doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but you’ve gotta make sacrifices.”
In the same interview, Affleck remarked that Lopez is “much more traditional than I anticipated she would be.”
The “If You Had My Love” singer chose to file for divorce on the second anniversary of her and Affleck’s second wedding ceremony. She filed the divorce papers alone without a lawyer. The docs listed the date of the couple’s separation as April 26, 2024.
The two stars reportedly did not have a prenup, leaving their sizable assets at stake in what could be a contentious divorce.
According to one report, Lopez felt that Affleck didn’t show “any interest” in making the marriage work and decided it was time for her to move on.
