ANIMAL INSTINCT

A-Lister Reveals Why He Bailed on Casting Ex at Last Minute

Ben Affleck initially wanted Jennifer Garner to play his character’s wife in “Animals.”

Ben Affleck has revealed why he pulled his ex-wife from a leading role in his new movie, only to end up starring opposite her.

The Hollywood A-lister was set to direct “Animals,” a Netflix thriller about a troubled marriage, with Matt Damon playing the lead. For Mark’s therapist wife, Affleck turned to Jennifer Garner, his former real-life wife and the mother of his children.

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“I thought, God, Jen Garner would be amazing for this role,” Affleck told Entertainment Weekly. He also saw a practical upside to working together, noting they could coordinate the shoot around their shared custody arrangement. “She can bring something interesting that she hasn’t [done], that I kind of know she can do,” he said.

Then, just two weeks before filming was due to start, Affleck scrapped the entire movie.

The trigger was another kidnapping thriller. Affleck learned that Spike Lee and Denzel Washington were making “Highest 2 Lowest,” which also centered on a kidnapped son. His reaction, he said, was: “Oh, s---.”

Affleck worried “Animals” could look like a “competing version” of the other film, a fear that only deepened once he discovered Lee’s movie was a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low.”

“That freaked me out,” Affleck said. After talking it over with Damon and his producing partners, he pulled the plug. “We’re not doing it,” he said.

However, just a couple of months later, Affleck was still thinking about the project and decided to bring it back. Damon, however, was no longer available. So Affleck stepped into the role himself, putting him in the position of playing Garner’s on-screen husband in a movie about a marriage falling apart.

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That’s when the original casting plan collapsed for good.

“I talked to Jen, and she was like, ‘We don’t wanna do that. You just get baggage,’” Affleck said. He agreed, while stressing there was no tension between them. “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.”

The issue wasn’t personal, he said. “What you don’t wanna do is take the audience’s baggage and have it work against you, you know?”

He instead cast Kerry Washington, someone he had long wanted to work with, in Garner’s role. The swap also reshaped the character’s marriage, making Affleck’s character part of an interracial couple and prompting the filmmakers to build new backstory around it.

Affleck says he now believes “Animals” is different enough from the other kidnapping thrillers on the way to stand on its own.

He and Garner got together in 2004 and married the following year. They separated in 2015, and their divorce was finalized in October 2018. They have three children together.

“Animals” hits select theaters and Netflix on October 9.

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Leigh KimminsReporter

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