The Moment
Jennifer Garner just outed Ben Affleck as a full-on Beyoncé superfan, and honestly, it tracks.
At a Thursday event at Diesel, A Bookstore in Los Angeles, the 53-year-old “Alias” alum started chatting with the crowd about listening to the same song on repeat. She joked, “I just want to tell you something. I’ve survived this. I have lived through it,” before revealing who, exactly, put her through musical Groundhog Day.
According to her story, back in 2009 when Affleck was filming his Boston crime thriller “The Town,” he locked onto one song and would not let it go: Beyoncé’s power ballad “Halo”. Over and over. For months. While they were living in a rental in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Author Laura Dave, who was onstage with Garner and Rita Wilson, admitted she does the same obsessive-song thing and compared Affleck’s habit to famed playwright Tom Stoppard’s. Which is one way to say: Ben’s not just brooding in Dunkin’ drive-thrus, he’s apparently crying to Beyonce in the edit bay, too.
Layered underneath the joke is the very un-messy reality that Garner and Affleck, both 53, are long divorced, dating other people, and still close enough that she can roast his Beyonce obsession in public and it lands as affectionate-not mean.
The Take
I’ll say it: there is something deeply poetic about Ben Affleck directing a gritty bank-robbery movie while listening to “Halo” on repeat. It’s like soundtracking a car chase with wedding vows.
But the real story here isn’t just that Ben has a Bey playlist; it’s how Garner tells the story. She doesn’t spill some ugly secret or drag him as an ex. She gives us a goofy, very specific detail that says, “This man drove me a little nuts, but I know him, and I’m fine.” That’s a master class in post-divorce PR.
In a culture where celebrity splits are usually all scorched earth and subtweets, Garner and Affleck are playing a longer, calmer game. They share three kids-Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 13-and have been spotted spending holidays together, including Thanksgiving at her Brentwood home in 2025, even as he navigated the same-day optics of also being out with Jennifer Lopez and their son.
So when Garner stands onstage and jokes about “surviving” his Beyonce loop, it feels less like a dig and more like something your favorite cousin would say about her ex-husband at a family barbecue. A little eye-roll, a lot of history, zero venom.
If anything, the “Halo” anecdote makes Affleck more human. We’ve all had that song we play into the ground during a big life moment-only most of us don’t turn it into the unofficial emotional soundtrack for a $90 million movie. Ben just did what every middle-aged guy does; he just did it with Beyonce and a studio budget.
Receipts
Confirmed
- Garner, at a Los Angeles bookstore event on Jan. 16, 2026, described surviving someone playing a single song on repeat and identified that person as Ben Affleck while he was making “The Town” in 2009.
- Event coverage and photo captions from that night specify the song as Beyonce’s “Halo,” which Affleck reportedly listened to over and over during production.
- Public records and prior reports confirm Garner and Affleck married in 2005, separated in 2015, and finalized their divorce in 2018. They share three children: Violet (20), Seraphina (17), and Samuel (13).
- Widely covered public outings show Affleck spending Thanksgiving 2025 at Garner’s Brentwood, California, home with their kids, and the exes reuniting for a theater trip to the Hollywood Pantages Theatre with Seraphina in December 2025.
- Affleck’s marriage to Jennifer Lopez lasted from 2022 until their divorce proceedings in 2025, a timeline reflected in public filings and coverage.
Jennifer Garner revealed that Ben Affleck used to listen to Beyoncé’s “Halo” repeatedly while he worked on The Town
“Ben Affleck listens to a song over and over. I had a three-month-old and a three-year-old living in a rental in Cambridge, Massachusetts while he was shooting The… pic.twitter.com/61AcfSTcNY
— BEYPRESS. (@beyoncepress) January 16, 2026
Unverified / Reported
- An unnamed insider, quoted in a November 2024 celebrity report, claimed Affleck feels a special “comfort” with Garner despite their split. That quote reflects the source’s perspective, not an on-the-record statement from Affleck.
- Any guess about why Affleck fixated on “Halo”-or what it meant emotionally-is speculation. We know he played it; we do not know his inner monologue.
Backstory (For Casual Readers)
If you lost the plot somewhere around Bennifer 2.0, here’s the cheat sheet. Garner and Affleck met in the early 2000s, married in 2005, and became the poster couple for cozy, jeans-and-sneakers Hollywood. After a decade, they separated in 2015 and officially divorced in 2018, with Garner later saying the hardest part was the “breaking up of a family,” not the headlines. Affleck eventually rekindled his early-2000s romance with Jennifer Lopez; they married in 2022 and were done by 2025. Through all of it, Garner has kept her lane: steady work, low-drama interviews, and quietly disciplined co-parenting.
What’s Next
Will this Beyoncé reveal change anyone’s life? No. Will it give the internet a fresh angle on Ben Affleck memes? Absolutely. Expect a new wave of “sad Ben” photos captioned with “Remember those walls I built” in three, two, one…
On a practical level, nothing about custody or careers shifts because Ben once wore out “Halo” in Cambridge. Garner continues to promote her projects and public appearances, Affleck keeps working in film, and their kids get parents who show up to holidays and theater nights together instead of communicating only via lawyers.
The wild card here would be Beyoncé herself. If she ever so much as likes a post about this, the pop-culture timeline will melt. Until then, “Halo” is just one more little thread in the weird, modern tapestry of exes who share kids, memories, and, apparently, playlists.
Maybe that’s the quiet revolution: not the fact that Ben Affleck loves a Beyonce ballad, but that Jennifer Garner can tell you all about it with a smile instead of a court filing.
Sources
- Jennifer Garner’s onstage remarks at Diesel, A Bookstore event in Los Angeles, Jan. 16, 2026.
- Public records and prior reporting on Garner-Affleck marriage and 2018 divorce; coverage of their family Thanksgiving in Brentwood and theater outing in late 2025.
- Publicly documented timeline of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s marriage (2022-2025).
Your turn: Does Garner joking about Ben’s “Halo” habit read to you as sweet, awkward, or a little of both-and would you ever stay this friendly with your own ex?
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