She is considered an icon of the women’s and racial struggle for equality and the epitome of kitsch. An Instagram star (an extremist organization banned in Russia) and an object of ridicule on Twitter, she attracts hundreds of thousands of stadiums, multi-million TV audiences and annoys a lot of people. She is 52. J. Lo already knows the price of all this.
I try to convince J. Lo that I’m in the kitchen-living room of her house in Bel-Air in Los Angeles just to talk about her. Not about her opinions on extraneous issues, not about her films and performances, not about her attitude to Botox therapy and plastic corrections of faces and figures. About her. I have to convince her, because she believes that an interview with her … “Yes, as if I constantly teach everyone: how to eat, how to exercise, how to relate to this and that, how to find contact with children, how … I have no idea to teach anyone. And it turns out like this. Maybe my tone is somehow wrong? Cheeky?»
Frankly, it seems touching to me that she does not blame us, the interviewers. And her insecurity is touching. It’s Jennifer Lopez! How can she doubt her tone and the fact that her opinion is being asked? But she shrugs in disbelief.
She had a dance rehearsal again today almost all day, and now it’s 21:30, and she’s just going to have dinner. A reserved, taciturn middle-aged lady from my companion’s household staff brings in a tray of something that exudes a hot, spicy scent and places it on the table in front of us. “Eat! Bon appetit!» — the hostess orders, and here her tone really becomes somewhat «impudent». “Eat, otherwise you won’t have time, don’t keep up with me,” she generously explains. And I obey, because she herself eats somehow deliciously and talks about food also with appetite.
Jennifer Lopez: Chuletas! Our «Latin» dish. Pork on the bones! Marinated in our own Puerto Rican seasonings, with rice and vegetables, which are loved in Latin America — you see jalapenos? According to my mom’s recipe. I ate this all my childhood, and I only found out the recipe when I left New York for Los Angeles, the capital of world show business, so to speak. I called my mother and said that I miss New York, her, my sisters, and especially her cooking. And my mother dictated to me the recipes of our homemade dishes. I learned how to cook Puerto Rican over the phone: chuletas, sancochos… You don’t know… Chicken legs and beef ribs are stewed in a mixture of orange and lime juice with sweet potatoes and a hundred other vegetables. I’ll give my mother’s recipe if you want …
And I read that you had a difficult relationship with your mother …
Actually, I have simple relationships with everyone — I just love someone, I just don’t like someone. And usually I do not hide either one or the other. In that sense, I am like my mother. But she is … yes, adamant. My sisters and I were brought up in strictness, my mother is a teacher. After high school, I worked as a secretary in a law firm and went to college to study business. I had enough of a semester — not mine …
It became completely clear that dancing is mine. I always danced — from the age of five I went to a dance school, studied classical ballet, flamenco, tap dance. So I dropped out of college and went to Phil Black’s studio, the best contemporary dance school in New York at the time. Parents were outraged, especially my mother. She said that since I decided to live my mind, I should move out of the house. I spent the first night in the studio, somehow I managed.
We didn’t see each other or talk for eight months. And then I decided enough was enough. My mom loved Barry Manilow then, he was so popular in the 1980s… I got two tickets to his concert, it was very close to the studio. And she came to her mother. It seemed to me that she was waiting for me to come … Now she is probably the closest person to me. And to my children too… But I didn’t return home then. It’s not about pride, no. It was just irreversible — I chose my life.
You say that you are similar to your mother in some character traits. Does this mean that you are also strict with your children?
Hmm, I honestly never even thought about it… Probably not… Because… You know, Emmy and Max are amazing people! They have so much sympathy for others, so much understanding! About three years ago … yes, they were about ten years old, their nanny got sick. So they got terribly alarmed, tried to cook some special soup — chicken broth with ginger, a classmate told them that this was the first remedy against the flu — and run with it to her. And so constantly. Last year, at the peak of the pandemic, Emmy was crying and asking me, “Mom, why is this? Why are people dying and doctors can’t help them?»
And what did you answer?
She said honestly that not everything in the world is in our, human, power. But it is in our power not to give up and hold on. What else can you answer? And it was simple — I really think so, and Emmy is a very religious person. This is from my grandmother, of course, and from my aunts, my sisters — the female part of the family is sincerely religious. When a grandmother stays with the children, prayer is an obligatory ritual.
But Max, my son, is a different person. He is an activist by nature. When the Black Lives Matter participants called for a march against police brutality, although I sympathize with them as a Latina, I was not going to go to the march — after all, I was used to avoiding the crowd for obvious reasons. But Max said that his Youtube gamers felt the need to join. He was convinced that we should all go, especially me, because people like me would be heard.
And you know, it was an amazing feeling to be among those who, like you, are against the violence of the authorities. I was not in the crowd, but among like-minded people and even more likely … like-minded people. Without Max, I would not have been able to experience this feeling of togetherness. In general, now I would say that Max and Emmy are more likely to keep me strict than I am. I think children make us better — they make us show the best side of ourselves. And we try — ashamed in front of them, if anything. Moreover, in my opinion, they are a more empathetic generation than we are.
Why do you think so?
I think this is just a plus of social networks. They learn about the hardships of other people, and first-hand, involuntarily break out of the cocoon of family care, parental well-being. And this is good.
You are also active on social networks. And share on Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) very personal moments…
Certainly! This is my chance to show who I really am. Not a diva, not a star, not a regular on the red carpet. And not only the manic «achiever». I am human. Who is over 50, who has children, sisters, parents …
But at the same time, your page on Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) is quite conflict-free. Everything sparkles and shimmers there, no problem!
Yeah. And why should I burden the public with my problems? After all, I’m an artist, I entertain. My task is to inspire, inspire, make life easier for people, and not to hang my burdens on the viewer and listener. But for me, social networks are support.
I started my career in the 1990s, people of my generation were deprived of such a chance to tell who we are. Back then, the power of the tabloids was limitless. You are under the gunpoint, exactly the gunpoint, of the paparazzi’s photo lens and you can’t oppose anything to it. They make fun of you, discuss the figure and specifically the ass — and I have never been thin and was very different from the dried-up, as if from some kind of human herbarium, Vogue models of that time. It was insulting and wild to me — I’m from a Hispanic family and from the black-Latin Bronx, where roundness was considered just the desired norm …
In general, all this hurt me. Now I know that I’m not that hard to offend. As soon as I became at least somewhat famous, I faced such criticism! I’m tasteless, I’m sassy, »you can take a girl out of the Bronx, but you can’t take the Bronx out of a girl» … And I began to doubt myself — am I really a singer? Is it an actress? Am I a professional dancer? It was hard.
But you did it. And How?
Just at some point I said to myself: you can’t become a victim of someone else’s opinions. You need to keep doing what you like, but harder, better. And to prove my right to exist here, now and in the capacity that I think is the only possible one for myself. Proving yourself is what I call it. For me, this is a good fuel to move through life. I’m from the Bronx! I don’t settle for anything in between. I need the top.
And it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about it. True, this is half the battle when it comes to someone’s opinion. Worse, when you yourself suddenly realize your failure, or something. I felt this acutely on the verge of a divorce from Mark (Marc Anthony is a singer and composer, Lopez’s ex-husband and father of her children Max and Emmy. — Ed.) Well, what is it — I’m married for the third time, and here again nothing happened? And we have small children. And I curse my romanticism — after all, I really believe in this «and lived happily ever after …». But I feel miserable. And I think we should all be happy. You cannot live without happiness. You need to do something, and this something is a divorce. But the feeling of failure, it haunts you.
Mainly because of the children?
No, because of my own mistakes! It’s so hard to avoid them in relationships… It’s easier for me with children: they shouldn’t have doubts that they are loved. They must be sure that they occupy an extremely important place in your life … And you know what else … It’s good if they see that divorce for parents is a relief, not a loss and trauma. Maybe that’s the main thing. Even more important than love. It is more important when they live in an atmosphere of… liberation from heavy fetters, or something.
But here is a new relationship, and a new parting …
Oh, that’s a completely different story! Alex and I (Alex Rodriguez — professional baseball player, sports star in the USA, Lopez’s boyfriend for three years. — Ed.) Just with a delay, we realized that the best «amorphous» state of our relationship is friendship. Friendship at home, families, our children — Alex has two daughters — continue to meet and make friends.
We’ve postponed the wedding twice, not just because of the pandemic, although it also mattered: we are at home, finally spending time together — the six of us — and you can finally listen to your true feelings. In general, I am grateful to the lockdown, although I understand that for many it will sound blasphemous, but the previous year was too busy for me — producing films, filming «First Passer», recording a new album, releasing my own cosmetic line … And then I had to stop. Me, whose main instinct is to fill every moment of life with work. And so I have always lived, since childhood!
So at first I felt like a dog that had been forgotten to walk. But it was important and right to stop. Yes, now it seems that I didn’t know my children before the pandemic, although I seemed to be constantly trying to be with them!
But I’m glad I found out. And I learned that sometimes we mistake a deep friendly feeling for love. Alex and I have so much in common: Hispanic origin — his parents are from the Dominican Republic, a similar upbringing, he also experienced wide popularity, he also has two children … And the commonality is so easy to mistake for love …
You know, to be honest … I’m your age, and it’s strange for me to hear about falling in love after fifty. I do not think that at a certain age women can experience such passions. And this is not ageism, but reality, including physiological. And at the same time, the world became aware of your new old love, reuniting with Ben Affleck, to whom you were once engaged …
Oh, I won’t argue. I’m 52 — not the age when discussing age. If you say that there are things more important than love, I, a complete romantic, would rather agree with you. But love… It is different. There is some space in you, empty. Passions with passions, but emptiness … it gapes. And suddenly he appears. Fills the gaping void. You see, by fifty-two I managed to reach … the point of happiness. Alex laughs: «I don’t know another person who would live such a chemically pure life.» I have never drank, never smoked, I have never even tried drugs, I have been drinking decaffeinated coffee for 30 years, food is only organic. Really funny — chemically pure.
But seriously: I live a clean life not only chemically. I do only what I consider important and necessary. I am surrounded by people who love me, take care of me and whom I love — from mom and dad to my makeup artist. And I can show them all how much I appreciate them. This is such an amazing time of life… A time of miracles. That is, intuition tells me that miracles are now possible. You see, they have already begun to happen. I’m sure there are many more miracles to come. How do I become a grandmother, for example. Which is not far off, by the way.