When we last saw Bennifer, literally two days ago, Deep Water Star Ben Affleck™️ was supporting Jennifer Lopez at the iHeart Radio Awards as she was presented with the Icon Award. Yesterday, they were out and about, running errands. Doing stuff for their new house, maybe? They’ve reportedly offered for a $50+ million Paul Williams mansion in Bel Air. Celebrity real estate smut hounds might remember that during Bennifer Phase I, Affleck had a multi-home compound in Georgia that he sold in 2019. That’s where he and JLo reconciled after calling off their wedding in 2003, before ultimately breaking up. Mega-real estate has always played a role in their relationship, and now they’re next-stepping their second go-round with that Bel Air estate, which has four kitchens and presumably enough counter space for their blended family.
They also drove through for some McDonald’s earlier this week, and I stan a couple that can drop fifty mil on a mansion and then roll through for some Big Macs, and that is not a joke. Bennifer was the height of celebrity cheese in the early aughts, and hand-feeding Affleck a cookie in the car is a flashback to that cheese, but this reconnection they’ve made, while still attracting tons of public interest and paparazzi, is a lot lower-key and seems less fraught—the cookie eating, for instance, seems more cute and less cringe, in an era where we embrace earnestness better than we did in the aughts. It’s probably the effect of nearly twenty years of life, other marriages and relationships, kids, et cetera, coming in between and all the maturity that carries, but I really love the way they look at each other. And I love that they’re still cheesy and massive real estate is still part of their bag, and that they eat fast food in the car, too. Stars, they’re just like us!
