Ben Affleck has opened up about why his time filming 2017’s “Justice League” was “the worst experience.”
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times published Friday, Affleck said working on the superhero film was a low point in his career due to a number of factors, including “competing agendas.”
The two-time Oscar winner also pointed to his divorce from Jennifer Garner (the couple filed for divorce in 2017 after announcing their split in 2015), his time away from home, the death of director Zack Snyder’s daughter and the reshooting of scenes, as reasons for his experience.
Joss Whedon took over to complete the film (a move that became controversial) after Snyder stepped down from his role during post-production after his daughter Autumn’s death in March 2017.
“It just was the worst experience. It was awful,” Affleck told the LA Times. “It was everything that I didn’t like about this. That became the moment where I said, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ It’s not even about, like, ‘Justice League’ was so bad. Because it could have been anything.”
Whedon, who created “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” has been accused of being emotionally abusive and “toxic” on the set of the late-1990s to early-2000s series and its spinoff “Angel.” In 2020, Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg in the 2017 “Justice League,” similarly accused Whedon of being “abusive,” “gross” and “unprofessional” on the set of the superhero film.
Elsewhere in the interview, Affleck noted that as he advanced in his career, he realized he needed to “stick to what my standards were” when it came to choosing projects.
“I’m not preoccupied with notions of success or failure about money or commercial success, because those things really corrupt your choices,” he later said. “Then what happens is the movies are less interesting and you’re less good.” (Read his entire interview the LA Times here.)
“The Tender Bar” actor faced backlash last month after he discussed his marriage to Garner during an interview on “The Howard Stern Show,” and seemingly suggested that part of the reason he started drinking was because he felt “trapped.”
“I was like, ‘I can’t leave ’cause of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’” he said at one point during the lengthy interview, according to People. “What I did was drink a bottle of scotch and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
Affleck later criticized news outlets for taking clips of his two-hour interview out of context, and making him out to be the “worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy.”
“I would never want my kids to ever believe I would say a bad word about their mom,” he said during an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
“The Tender Bar” hit select theaters last month and premiered on Amazon Prime this week.