“It was fool’s errand to finance your own thing”: Jennifer Lopez Was Terrified Before Risking Millions of Dollars For This is Me Now

Despite having decades of experience in the industry, celebrities are bound to feel scared when trying their hand at a new creative concept. The sensational singer and actor Jennifer Lopez felt similarly terrified while working on her next project that will be released on Amazon Prime on Friday. Titled This is Me … Now: A Love Story, the film is one of a kind as it merges music with a powerful narrative.

Jennifer Lopez Financed This is Me … Now: A Love Story

Even though Jennifer Lopez had it all under control while making the 65-minute musical This is Me … Now: A Love Story, an end-moment hustle threatened to destroy her creative dream. The funding for her film was pulled at the last minute and the singer had to loosen her purse strings to fund the project or let it vanish into oblivion. Lopez used her $400 million net worth to finish the project. Understandably, she was hesitant to put in her own money but she knew it was the only way out. Lopez and her producing partner at Nuyorican Prods. Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to speak about the ambitious project. The latter said,

“I believe in her so much. She was open to anybody’s notes. She understood that she had to do it. She understood it was a fool’s errand to finance your own thing, and yet sometimes the fool is the genius because you’re following your heart and this really is her heart.”

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Born to entertain and perform, Lopez acts, sings, and dances in the musical. After years of experience, all of this came easily to her. Financing the project was new to Lopez as she didn’t realize how over-budget they were going to go. Lopez adds, “It’s like there could have never been enough money for the project. We didn’t have endless funds from a studio. This was a very independent project that I was self-financing. So it was very challenging producorially.”

The duo started analyzing the project and determining which scenes were necessary and which ones could be cut out. Given their creative prowess, it was a painstaking process to curb their creativity when they had such grand plans for the original film. Lopez calls the musical a “surrealistic magical odyssey,” underlining the ideas that eventually fructified into the movie we will see on February 16.

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Ben Affleck’s Role in This is Me … Now: A Love Story

This is Me Then was Lopez’s third studio album which was released in 2002. The album came in the midst of her high-profile romance with Ben Affleck. The duo got engaged back then but called it off a few months later. Poetically, Lopez got the idea of revamping the title and showcasing her stand in life currently while releasing an extension named This is Me … Now: A Love Story. The singer wanted to share a hopeless romantic’s love story. In the interview, she shared,

“Then there’s this idea when you really love somebody, they’re always a part of you. There’s a presence that they have, even when you move on. Maybe you never wind up together but they’re a part of you. This story wasn’t about Ben and I. This was about a hopeless romantic’s journey through life in her search for love. But there was a presence and how did we have that presence of this person? That was the heartbreak that we talk about in the beginning. And so we came up with this device of this person [Lex Stone, a television anchor] in the background who was a presence, but not really in their life.”

In many ways, Affleck inspired the creation of Lex Stone in the movie, an ever-present personality who impacted her deeply. The musical showcases heartbreak and love with music and intricate emotions all within a short duration. In an attempt to capture the pulse of real-life relationships, Lopez wanted to keep the story as real as possible while using her creative license in shaping the scenes on screen.