NEW YORK − On Oct. 6, all eyes were on exes Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who reunited on the red carpet for her new movie musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” which he produced.
But the glitzy premiere was also a family affair for Lopez, 56, who posed with twins Max and Emme, 17, whom she shares with ex-husband Marc Anthony.
Ahead of the event, Lopez told USA TODAY that she was “so excited” to show the film to her mother, Guadalupe, who instilled in her a love for music and dance at an early age. It’s a passion that the Grammy nominee now shares with her own children.
“Both of my kids love singing,” says Lopez, who has posted many sweet videos of her son, Max, performing through the years on her social media. Emme also took the stage with Lopez at the 2020 Super Bowl for an emotional mashup of Lopez’s “Let’s Get Loud” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”
Jennifer Lopez, right, poses with kids Max, right, and Emme, center, on the “Kiss of the Spider Woman” red carpet in New York on Oct. 6.
In a recent sit-down interview about “Spider Woman,” USA TODAY asked Lopez whether Emme ever helped her rehearse around the house or visited the set to watch her work.
“They do come to work with me sometimes,” Lopez says. “Now that they’re getting older, they’re more into hanging out with me than they were when they were in those teenage years, so that’s exciting (laughs). And they’re definitely a musical theater kid, so that’s been nice to watch. It’s like my dream come true, having a musical theater kid.”
Earlier this year, Emme accompanied Lopez to the Broadway openings of Denzel Washington’s “Othello” and George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Growing up, Lopez adored the musicals “Funny Girl” and “West Side Story,” and Emme now has “so many” of their own favorite shows, too.
“They go to musical theater camp in the summer,” Lopez says. “Right now, ‘Falsettos‘ is what they are obsessed with. Literally, we were listening to it when I left the house this morning.”
‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ How Jennifer Lopez found ‘a brand new me’ in her latest movie
Bill Condon, who wrote and directed “Spider Woman,” says it was “an incredible gift” to watch how effortlessly Lopez flipped between mom and superstar modes while making the movie.
“To get to meet her mother and her sisters and her kids was really special, because she lives for them,” Condon says. “The reason she’s a huge star, and has been for so long, is that there’s something that immediately makes you care about her. There’s something that just connects, and it’s no different when you get to know her or work with her. There’s an absolute honesty and openness and kindness.”
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Tonatiuh, left, and Jennifer Lopez appear in a fantasical musical sequence of “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” is adapted from the 1993 Broadway musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb, which itself is based on the 1985 Oscar-winning movie starring William Hurt. The film is set in an Argentine prison, where a genderqueer inmate named Molina (Tonatiuh) conjures up memories of their favorite big-screen diva, Ingrid Luna (Lopez).
The actress performs in nearly a dozen song-and-dance-numbers in the Oscar hopeful, which marks Lopez’s first movie musical. As a young girl, the New York native did school plays and dreamed of becoming a Broadway star.
“It was fun; I loved it,” Lopez recalls. “I always knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”
But when she moved to Los Angeles in 1991, Lopez began booking a steady string of film and TV roles. After the success of her 1997 biopic “Selena,” “I wanted to go for a recording career, even though I had a serious acting career and people advised me against it,” Lopez recalls. “I was like, ‘No, I think I want to do both.’
“So my life just kind of happened that way, and here were are now with ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman.’ “
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jennifer Lopez reveals ‘dream come true’ as mom to Max and Emme
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