Jennifer Garner didn’t hold back when she revealed ex-husband Ben Affleck as a card-carrying Beyhive member.
“Do you guys do this? Do you listen to a song over and over again?” Garner, 53, asked fans while appearing at Los Angeles bookstore Diesel, A Bookstore, on Thursday, alongside The Last Thing He Told Me author Laura Dave and her Apple TV costar Rita Wilson. “I just want to tell you something. I’ve survived this. I have lived through it.”
Garner explained that creatives needed to listen to music while they work — like Dave, 48, said she does while writing — is something Affleck, 53, did throughout their marriage.
“Ben Affleck listens to a song over and over,” she recalled via People. “I had a three-month-old and a three-year-old living in a rental in Cambridge, Massachusetts while he was shooting The Town. And he listened to Beyoncé‘s ‘Halo,’ and I would be nursing.”
Dave was perfectly in sync with Affleck’s working process, saying, “I love that because the only other person now besides Ben that I’ve heard that does that was [screenwriter] Tom Stoppard. And when I heard that, I thought, ‘OK, I’m in some good company.’”
According to Garner’s account of events, she would’ve just given birth to her and Affleck’s second child when he was writing, directing and acting in The Town.
The film was released in 2010, one year after the former couple welcomed Seraphina in January 2009. The exes also share daughter Violet, 20, and son Samuel, 13.
Garner and Affleck were married from 2005 to 2015 when they announced their split. The actors’ divorce was finalized in 2018, and although they weathered a few storms during their relationship, the pair have found their rhythm as coparents and friends.
“Their relationship has evolved into a strong friendship,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly in March 2025. “Jen is a grounding and trusting force in Ben’s life.”
The insider added that the 13 Going on 30 actress and Affleck’s bond is “the strongest that it’s ever been.”
Garner, for her part, made a rare comment on the more difficult time in her and Affleck’s dynamic earlier this month, reflecting on their divorce.
“You have to be smart about what you can and can’t handle, and I could not handle what was out there,” Garner told Marie Claire UK in an interview published on January 7. “But what was out there was not what was hard. The fact of it is what was hard.”
The Alias alum explained, “The actual breaking up of a family is what was hard. Losing a true partnership and friendship is what was hard.”
Despite the hardships of going through a public breakup, Garner confirmed that she and Affleck have come out the other side.
“I’m able to coparent at this point in time with peace and equanimity and a partnership that I didn’t know I would ever get back to,” Garner told the outlet. “I think it’s important for women to know, when they think, ‘Oh, I’ll never see that, I’ll never have that feeling, I’ll never be friends with this person again’ [that] time is the opportunity. Time is the opportunity to heal. Time is the opportunity to forgive, to move on and to find a new way to be friends.”
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