Surely This Will Get Everyone to Stop Talking About Bennifer

Everyone—or, more specifically, several of my group chats—is talking about Bennifer (the era-transcending union of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck) right now, and Lopez’s best attempts to quiet all the frenzied, morbid speculation about the maybe-implosion of Bennifer 2.0 are unlikely to help. On Wednesday, during the press tour for her forthcoming Netflix movie Atlas (which… looks incredibly puzzling), one reporter asked Lopez if she cared to address the swirling rumors that she and Affleck are heading toward divorce, two years into their marriage. “You know better than that,” Lopez said with a dry little smile. Unsurprisingly, she did not have more to say! Unfortunately, neither this nor really anything Lopez could have said will quash the 24/7 tabloid coverage of which neighborhoods she and Affleck are spotted in amid reports that they’re no longer cohabitating together or nonstop paparazzi monitoring of their respective ring fingers. If anything, I can’t help but ponder whether it wouldn’t just be a whole lot easier for Lopez to say that she and Affleck are fine and not getting a divorce if that is the case??? I get the desire for privacy and to not feed the beast that is the pop culture news media ecosystem, but we were pretty much past that the moment Affleck was photographed without his wedding ring on Saturday. He’s since been spotted wearing it this week—but now what’s raising as many eyebrows is his conspicuous absence from the premieres of Lopez’s Atlas, out Friday. It could just be that the movie looks frankly god-awful. But taken together with all the insider quotes about how couples therapy is failing them, the weeks-long period sans any photos of the two together, or how they’ve allegedly taken up residency in different parts of LA, of course, people are going to speculate. After all, long before reports of their alleged separation, the internet has always been obsessed with reading into everything about these two—case in point: the years of lip readers insisting their every interaction since 2021 has been one of simmering, toxic hatred.  So, that said, I’m sure it must feel at least vaguely satisfying to fire off a snippy little one-liner like “You know better than that!” But people are going to keep talking—and probably making a whole bunch of shit up—nonetheless, if not more so thanks to your standoffishness. Khloe Kardashian, I, too, would be “relieved” if my ex packed it up and moved to Cleveland. [People] Kate Hudson’s therapist told her to take a year off from even flirting with anyone, and she obeyed because she is stronger than the rest of us. [Page Six] Everyone’s mad about Kate Middleton’s royal painting. [New York Post] Patrick Mahomes chose to go to bat for his almost cartoonishly sexist teammate (do kickers count as teammates???) Harrison Butker. [Just Jared] Club Chalamet’s review of the new Madame Tussauds wax sculpture of Timothee Chalamet in London is officially in. [Twitter]