Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu Shut Down Ben Affleck Question: ‘You Know Better’

Simu Liu and Jennifer Lopez during 'Atlas' event - Credit: Adrián Monroy/Medios y Media/Getty Images
Simu Liu and Jennifer Lopez during 'Atlas' event - Credit: Adrián Monroy/Medios y Media/Getty Images

Jennifer Lopez and Simu Liu want to talk about their new film, Atlas. Nothing else!

During a press event in Mexico City Wednesday, Liu and Lopez quickly shut down a reporter trying to finagle a response about rumors that Lopez and Ben Affleck had split.

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“Is your divorce from Ben Affleck real?” asked the reporter in a seemingly joking voice as Lopez let out a chuckle.

Liu quickly interrupted. “OK, we’re not doing that,” interjected Liu before wrapping the conference, which was not meant to be a Q&A.

“You know better than that,” added Lopez.

“Don’t come in here with that energy,” said Liu.

The clip then cuts to Liu praising Lopez for her work on Atlas as a producer. “The reason why I am here and why Sterling [K. Brown] was in this beautiful movie is because Jen cares,” Liu said. “And Jen cares about things like representation and diversity, and she’s a boss.”

The reporter’s question about her marriage to Affleck came days after reports in multiple celebrity magazines, including People, that the couple’s marriage is “not in the best place.” As rumors swirled, the duo were captured by paparazzi in Santa Monica earlier this week.

The rumors of her split from Affleck arrived just three months after Lopez released her album (and its companion film) This Is Me… Now, inspired by her rekindling romance with Affleck. The two tied the knot last year.

“I would describe this as my most honest, free, empowering, [and] loving era,” Lopez told Rolling Stone in February. “There is such a thing as true love, and some things do last forever, and maybe it doesn’t have a perfectly straight road, but it’s real. Don’t give up on that because a life lived is really about love and the people that we share our life with.”

In Atlas, Lopez plays a woman on a mission to stop a rogue artificial intelligence known as Harlan (played by Liu), who is threatening life in a world with flying cars and robots. The Brad Peyton-directed sci-fi thriller premieres on Netflix May 24. In addition to Lopez and Liu, the film stars Brown, Gregory James Cohan, Abraham Popoola, Lana Parrilla, and Mark Strong.

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