Did Ben Affleck Seriously Cast Jennifer Garner As His Wife in 'Animals'?

As I was sifting through links for Pajiba Love early this morning, I came across this Page Six headline: “Why Ben Affleck cast ex-wife Jennifer Garner as love interest in new film — only to recast her.” Right off the bat, this sounded like Ben Affleck’s exact kind of mess, so my desire to know more intensified. Would he really be that big of a wrecking ball, and why would Jennifer Garner go along with it? To the shock of no one, Page Six’s headline wasn’t entirely accurate.

Here’s what really happened via Entertainment Weekly, who had the goods in a feature story that got mangled on its journey down the aggregation pipe. When Animals first got off the ground, Affleck was set to direct with Matt Damon starring in the lead role of Mark Kimball. Jennifer Garner was cast as Kimball’s wife, Abigail, which is weird-ish and messy-ish given the constant tabloid rumors surrounding the former couple, but it also made sense logistically as co-parents.

“I thought, God, Jen Garner would be amazing for this role,” he says. “It also has the added benefit of, like, both of us will see our kids more because we do a week and a week and back and forth. I thought, well, we can coordinate our schedules around it.”

So, Garner was cast as the female lead opposite Damon, not Affleck. That was the plan in 2024 until the film hit the backburner when Affleck learned that Animals shared a “similar thematic device” with Spike Lee’s Highest2Lowest. “I’ve already been in one of the two asteroid movies,” Affleck joked.

After consulting with Damon, the plug was pulled on Animals, but Affleck couldn’t resist the story for long. By this point, he’d lost his lead to Christopher Nolan, so Affleck cast himself as Mark, which presented a problem.

“I talked to Jen, and she was like, ‘We don’t wanna do that. You just get baggage,’” he says.

“I would love to work with her, frankly,” he continues about Garner. “She’s fabulous, and we’re really good friends, and I’m profoundly grateful to her, and we have a great thing. I still would wanna work with her in the future, but what you don’t wanna do is take the audience’s baggage and have it work against you, you know?”

At that point, Garner was recast with Kerry Washington stepping into the role of Abigail. So, in theory, Garner was briefly Affleck’s “love interest” before everyone went, “Welp, not doing this. Abort.” In reality, having them play opposite each other was not the plan at all. Jennifer Garner was just supposed to be Matt Damon’s wife while Ben Affleck watched. Wait.