Ben Affleck Reveals He Nearly Cast Jennifer Garner in His New Movie — Why It Didn’t Happen

Ben Affleck cast Kerry Washington to portray his wife in his upcoming thriller Animals, but the role nearly went to Affleck’s ex-wife Jennifer Garner.

Affleck, 54, told Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview that he originally intended for Garner, also 54, to costar in his new movie with Affleck’s best friend and co-producer Matt Damon. The film, which follows a Los Angeles mayoral candidate named Mark Kimball and his wife Abigail (Washington, 49) whose lives are upended when their son is kidnapped, ceased production when Affleck learned that Spike Lee and Denzel Washington were making last year’s Highest 2 Lowest, which also deals with kidnappings, two weeks before he originally intended to start filming Animals, as he told the outlet.

“I thought, God, Jen Garner would be amazing for this role,” Affleck told EW of wanting to cast Garner, whom he divorced from in 2015 and shares three children with. “It also has the added benefit of, like, both of us will see our kids more because we do a week and a week and back and forth. I thought, well, we can coordinate our schedules around it.”

By the time Affleck returned to the project, Damon, 55, had already committed to filming this summer’s blockbuster The Odyssey. Affleck then decided he should play Mark himself, but recognized that the movie could pose a difficulty for Garner, given that the film depicts a marriage on the rocks. “I talked to Jen, and she was like, ‘We don’t wanna do that. You just get baggage,’” Affleck told EW of Garner. “I would love to work with her, frankly. She’s fabulous, and we’re really good friends, and I’m profoundly grateful to her, and we have a great thing. I still would wanna work with her in the future, but what you don’t wanna do is take the audience’s baggage and have it work against you, you know?”

Affleck told the outlet that he instead texted Washington, who he became friends with in recent years, about costarring in Animals. “She’s very polished, but she’s also very warm. I thought, ‘Oh my God, she’s amazing for this,’” he said of the Scandal star. Washington told EW that she was excited to see the marriage at the center of Animals actually feature “a pretty horrible dynamic between the two” characters rather than a smaller role for Washington’s character.

“How do you maintain a relationship? That’s obviously something that was on my mind,” Affleck said of his idea for the film. “What does a marriage really require of us? How well can we know one another?

Affleck wrote Animals with screenwriters Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray, and he costars in Animals. Gillian Anderson, Adriana Paz, Ray Fisher, Christopher Woodley, Matt Gerald, Jacob Estrada, Luis Gerardo Méndez and Steven Yeun also costar in the movie.

Animals is in select theaters and on Netflix Oct. 9.