Jennifer Lopez Revealed the Heart-Wrenching Inspiration Behind 'This Is Me...Now' Film

Jennifer Lopez is getting ready to put it all out there with the release of her new album, This Is Me...Now and the accompanying film, This Is Me...Now: A Love Story, both of which drop on Feb. 16. When promoting the upcoming project, the multi-hyphenate got real about the heartbreak and pain that inspired parts of the film.

In a press conference on Thursday, the singer explained the movie's concept, which features both autobiographical storylines from her life and fictionalized "fantastical" elements that are more symbolic of her emotions or life events. "There's parts of it that feel very autobiographical, and there's parts that feel kind of meta," she explained. "Not exactly what happened but also the feeling of that is what happened. There were things about it that were super honest and true, and then there were things that were kind of more for taking license and really doing what was best for the entertainment and storytelling of the film."

There's one scene in particular that follows Lopez being a construction worker at a "heart factory," and the film's director Dave Meyers explained that concept came from a very vulnerable conversation they had about the heartbreak Lopez experienced when she and now-husband Ben Affleck broke up the first time. The two were engaged in the early 2000s before their split in 2004.

"Even the metaphor, sci-fi parts of the film, stem from a scent of Jen’s real story," Meyers explained. "That stemmed from her telling me the pain that she’s been in, specifically the pain that she went through when she broke up with Ben the first time. There was a lot of honesty that was shared in that first meeting. The heart factory became sort of a Titanic-level meltdown, which was a metaphor for what she was giving me as far as her truth."

Affleck is now one of her biggest supporters and championed the project from the very beginning (he even makes a cameo in the film). Lopez said that she initially doubted her ability to craft the story, until her husband encouraged her to lean into her talents.

"Ben kinda of said this to me, 'You do all the things, start stepping into that. Start owning that,'" she recalled, before adding that the album and film represent the end of one chapter and the start of another. "It ended this 20-year journey about a lot of questions that I had about love and being myself, a hopeless romantic, and what it means to really enter into a kind of healthier, more self-accepting phase for myself."

Lopez added that the film's mix of literal and metaphorical components are what make it so unique. "That mix of it being personal but also being able to be fantastical, surreal, magical, is I think what makes it really moving, entertaining, and super real," she said.

The film, which is available for streaming on Prime Video on Feb. 16, has a star-studded cast that includes Derek Hough, Fat Joe, Trevor Noah, Kim Petras, Post Malone, Keke Palmer, Sofia Vergara, and more, in addition to Lopez and Affleck.

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