Jennifer Lopez on ‘This Is Me Now’ Album: ‘A 20 Year Journey’

In order for Jennifer Lopez to execute her upcoming musical film This Is Me…Now: A Love Story the way she envisioned the project, she had to front the budget herself.

The multi-hyphenate superstar, 54, opened up about the Prime Video original film that accompanies her new album This Is Me…Now in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Monday and revealed she self-financed the epic visual experience. According to a Variety interview published the following day, the album, film and an accompanying documentary cost $20 million in total to produce. Once it was done, Amazon then purchased the project.

“We went in over budget. It was a challenging project in that way. It’s like there could have never been enough money for the project,” Lopez told THR. “We didn’t have endless funds from a studio. This was a very independent project that I was self-financing. So it was very challenging producorially.”

Directed by Dave Meyers, This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is a musical and visual interpretation of the life events that inspired This Is Me…Now, a sequel to her 2002 album This Is Me…Then — which chronicled her initial romance with now-husband Ben Affleck.

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The film includes a star-studded list of cameos, including Affleck, Post Malone, Fat Joe, Keke Palmer, Trevor Noah, Sofia Vergara, Kim Petras, Jenifer Lewis, Jay Shetty, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Derek Hough.

“Everybody thought I was crazy when I said I would [self-fund the film]. We did have financing, and then that fell out,” revealed Lopez. “They pulled out at the last minute, and then it was that moment where you go, ‘OK, do we just make a video or do we go ahead and do this thing?'”

At that point, the “Jenny from the Block” singer had a conversation with her Nuyorican Productions co-president Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas. “We talked about whether or not I do this or I just go make two videos and go the normal route. I decided that I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to see this vision through,” Lopez said.

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In a press conference about This Is Me…Now: A Love Story last week, the Hustlers actress said she had to convince A-listers to make cameos in the film.

“It was a challenge with the cameos that we have in the movie,” Lopez said. “We obviously had quite a few. Some came on the same day, some didn’t. We had to make it work. We did whatever we could.”

Jennifer Lopez in Dubai on Feb. 10, 2024.

Meyers, 51, explained that most of the cameos were shot separately, which made it “the hardest scene to edit.”

“A lot of them were personal friends of Jen’s, so Jen had to switch out of performance mode and kind of come join me and kind of hold their hands, because they didn’t understand what they were doing and they were out there wearing costumes on a green screen,” he said.

Lopez reassured the actors and told them to “trust” her. “I was like… just trust me. It’s going to be fine. I would never make you look crazy. And if it looks crazy, we will throw it in the garbage. Don’t worry about it. But luckily it turned out well. And a lot of them have seen the film already and are so excited,” she added.

Both This Is Me…Now and This Is Me…Now: A Love Story will be released on Friday.