As you are probably aware, Jennifer Lopez had a pretty novel approach to the release of her ninth studio album, This Is Me… Now earlier this month, with the star releasing it as a three-part project.
In addition to the actual album of music, J.Lo released a narrative-driven musical film called This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, which she funded with her own money.
Then there was the behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of the film: The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which was released on Amazon Prime on Tuesday.
Here, Jennifer offers fans a no-holds-barred insight into the challenges of creating her movie — including financial issues, and her struggle to secure celebrity cameos.
And it is in this documentary that Jen reveals that she lost out on her first choice of costar — Anthony Ramos – due to his friendship with her ex husband, Marc Anthony.
Jennifer famously married Marc just five months after she split from her now-husband Ben Affleck back in 2004. They welcomed twins Emme and Maximilian in 2008, but separated three years later.
They finalized their divorce in 2014, and are thought to have a healthy coparenting relationship. After their split, Jennifer dated A-Rod between 2017 and 2021 before rekindling her romance with Ben and marrying him in 2022.
Meanwhile, Marc married fashion model Nadia Ferreira last year.
In a seriously candid scene in her documentary, Jennifer can be seen confiding in her longtime friend and her movie’s wardrobe supervisor Shawn “Beezy” Barton during rehearsals. She says: “Anthony Ramos was gonna do this, the guy from In The Heights. He was going to do the ‘Rebound’ number with me, the glass house.”
“And he was like: ‘Ah… I’m friends with Marc,” she went on.
The documentary then cuts to a flashback scene of Jennifer speaking to Anthony on the phone about the situation. While his side of the conversation isn’t included, it is evident that Jennifer is trying to talk him round.
“First of all, I didn’t know that you and Marc were, like, good friends,” she tells him. “I didn’t know that… Well, that’s… That’s nice.”
Jennifer then explains that Marc is the father of her two children, so the film won’t be explicitly referencing him. She tells Anthony: “He’s the father of my kids, obviously I’m never going to do anything that’s going to, like, pinpoint him out. But it is very meta.”
“It is about, kind of, the 20-year journey between [her 2002 album This Is Me… Then] and this album,” Jennifer continues. “And a lot of things happened, and there were a lot of relationships that I was in. The thing you’re playing is representative of many relationships, not one specific relationship.”
But Anthony could not be swayed, and Jennifer later expresses her frustration as she tells Beezy: “I’m not even playing me in this; there’s a protagonist, this woman, who goes on this journey.”
“[Anthony’s] like: ‘Yeah, I think that people are gonna think that… You know how the media is,’” she continues. “I said: ‘But if we only did our art thinking about what the media’s gonna say… What the fuck are we doing?”
Anthony is a seasoned Broadway star and Hollywood actor, and Jennifer wanted to cast him for her “Rebound” scene, which shows Jennifer in a toxic relationship and dancing with a partner in a glass house as it shatters — with ropes pulling the couple back together again.
Dancer Gilbert Saldivar ultimately ended up taking on the role that Anthony rejected.
And Anthony wasn’t the only star to turn down an appearance in Jennifer’s project, with the documentary revealing that Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, and Khloé Kardashian were also approached for guest appearances that did not come to fruition.