After she missed her best friend’s nuptials, many fans are asking: Why didn’t Leah Remini attend Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s wedding and what is their friendship like now?
J-Lo and Ben married for a second time at Ben’s estate in Savannah, Georgia, in August 2022. The wedding was attended by J-Lo’s twins, Emme and Maximilian (whom she shares with ex-husband Marc Anthony), and Ben’s children, Violet, Seraphina and Samuel (whom he shares with ex-wife Jennifer Garner), as well as celebrities like Matt Damon. One star who was missing, however, was J-Lo’s longtime friend, Leah Remini. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight in 2018, Leah, who starred with J-Lo in 2018’s Second Act, revealed she met her best friend through J-Lo’s ex-husband. “I was friends with Marc Anthony and then he started dating Jennifer, and he was doing the film, Man on Fire,” Leah said at the time. “I went to the movie’s premiere and he said, ‘You have to meet Jennifer!’ And he was telling Jennifer, ‘You have to meet Leah and Angelo,’ my husband.” She continued, “We went to the premiere hoping she was gonna be ugly in real life. And then, when I was approaching her, I was like, ‘I hope it’s the lighting. Maybe she just looks good in here.’”
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J-Lo then added about how her friendship with Leah was immediate. “We fell in love right there,” she said. “It was one of those instant chemistry things where you just feel like, ‘I love this person. I love being around this person. This person makes me laugh.’” She continued, “She’s cool and we also have very similar upbringings. That’s why we work well together.”
After J-Lo and Ben, who dated from 2002 to 2004, got back together in April 2021, Leah posted an Instagram in June 2021 of her 51st birthday party, which was the first Instagram post of J-Lo and Ben together since they reunited “Wanted to share a little video from my birthday with you all because I got so much love from you on my birthday but also everyday,” Leah captioned the post. “I consider myself to have the best support system here on social media. Also, I can’t thank my family & friends enough for coming, for celebrating with me in a way that was very special to me.”
Given how close their friendship is, Leah raised eyebrows when she didn’t attend J-Lo and Ben’s second nuptials, which came a month after they married for the first time in July 2022 at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. “We did it. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient,” J-Lo wrote in her newsletter, On the JLo, at the time. She continued, “They were right when they said, “all you need is love”. We are so grateful to have that in abundance, a new wonderful family of five amazing children and a life that we have never had more reason to look forward to. Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive through in Las Vegas at twelve thirty in the morning in the tunnel of love drive through, with your kids and the one you’ll spend forever with. Love is a great thing, maybe the best of things-and worth waiting for.”
So why didn’t Leah Remini attend Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s wedding? Read on for what we know about J-Lo and Leah’s friendship now.
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Why didn’t Leah Remini attend Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s wedding?
Why didn’t Leah Remini attend Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s wedding? TMZ confirmed on August 22, 2022, that Leah was invited to J-Lo and Ben’s wedding, but declined the invitation to spend time with her 18-year-old daughter Sofia Bella Pagan (whom she shares with husband Angelo Pagan), before she goes off to college. Sources told TMZ that J-Lo and Leah are still close friends and follow each other on social media, but Leah wanted to stay home with Sophia instead of attend the wedding because of how much time Leah missed with her family when she was in the Church of Scientology.
Radar Online, however, reported a day later on August 23, 2022, that J-Lo and Leah hit a “rough patch” in their friendship because of the “Jenny From the Block” singer’s relationship with Ben. “Lean isn’t a fan of Ben’s. They don’t get along and when you go up against someone’s partner, you always lose,” a source told Radar Online. “Leah was there for Jen when Ben broke her heart. Leah knows everything, all the ugly details about what went down between her best friend and Ben. No wonder she doesn’t like him. Jennifer might have been ready to move on and forgive Ben, but Leah hasn’t and is worried it will happen again.”
Another source, however, told Radar Online that J-Lo and Leah simply haven’t spent as much time together since J-Lo and Ben got back together. “Jennifer is a newlywed and wants to be with her new husband not her friends. All friendships change after you meet ‘the one,’” the insider said. “She has one of the biggest careers, she has kids and now she has a new husband too. Jennifer doesn’t have time to hang out with Leah anymore. Leah needs to get over it or she will lose her friend for good.”
In an interview on TODAY in 2021, Leah revealed that the question she hates being asked the most is any question about J-Lo. “Questions about Jennifer,” she said at the time. “Not because I don’t love talking about my friend, but I feel a lot of times it’s for gossip purposes. Especially if I am trying to talk about something that is important, like our podcast, or exposing the abuses that we’re talking about in Scientology and the victims of Scientology and somebody asks me about Jennifer’s wedding. I just find it utterly annoying.” She added, “I don’t wanna give the idea that I don’t like talking about my friend, but it’s more about, like when is she getting married? If I had that exact info, I don’t think I would tell you here. That’s not my place to be saying.”
She also told TODAY at the time about how she didn’t realize how much J-Lo and Ben would be the focus of her 51st birthday Instagram post. “It’s always about Jennifer,” Leah said. “What’s funny is I had no idea. I don’t know if I was so into my own party, I was just so excited about my own party, the only caveat to my birthday video, to the photographer, is I said, ‘Just make sure everyone is in it.’” She continued, “I said, ‘Go through the guest list and everyone who’s on the guest list, I don’t want anyone to be left out.’ I didn’t even think this would be breaking into Dateline. Hello, it’s not about Jennifer, it’s about my birthday cake.”
Image: Courtesy of Celebra.
For more about J-Lo’s life, check out True Love by Jennifer Lopez. The 2014 memoir covers the “Jenny on the Block” singer’s career and personal life, from her start as a dancer to when she became a mom of two twins with her now-ex-husband Marc Anthony. In the book, which includes more than 200 personal photographs from J-Lo’s never-before-seen collection, the Selena actress writes about how “she confronted her greatest challenges, identified her biggest fears, and ultimately emerged a stronger person than she’s ever been” to become the pop icon we know today.
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