(Above: Jennifer Lopez posted this wedding day photo on her Instagram page jlo as well as on her newsletter which is linked to below. There is sweetness to this photo that actually touched me.)
Congratulations to Jennifer Lynn Affleck on her marriage to Ben There Done That. I know. Too glib. But the congratulations is sincere. I wish them a long and happy marriage and much happiness. She first announced it on her newsletter, OntheJLo.com
In a Styles Group Chat about the wedding in The New York Times among the Styles section writers Vanessa Friedman, Jacob Bernstein, Stella Bugbee, and Sandra Garcia, there was this exchange between Bernstein and Bugbee:
Jacob: Yes, there was a kind of duality to it. On the one hand, the quotidian description she gives of being on the line with those three or four other couples; and on the other, the speed at which she makes it this thing to be downloaded and consumed on her website — after you sign up for the newsletter.
Stella: Perhaps you’re being a touch too cynical, Jacob. I can see why the fact that it seemed ready to be released might raise questions like, “Is this authentic?” But that almost seems besides the point. She wanted control, and she got it.
The flood of stories about the wedding of Lopez and Affleck and that exchange caused me to think about my own experience doing a cover story on Lopez a few years ago and the pop cultural kerfuffle it caused because of the control she wanted over it all. I wrote about it at my other site sessumsmagazine.com after having never commented about it. I had never even mentioned the name of the magazine that had given me the assignment until then. SES/SUMS IT UP has now superseded the sessumsmagazine.com site for lots of reasons - many of them technological - just as Lopez’s own newsletter seems to have superseded her website jenniferlopez.com. I am sure she pays a staff for each but a website certainly demands one. A newsletter - especially here on Substack - just requires one person willing to do the writing because the technology that buttresses it does not require a kind of hands-on knowledge and a constant reconfiguration - which sounds rather like a description of Lopez and her relationship now with marriage this fourth time around. Again. I know. Too glib.
Here is what I wrote when commenting for the first time about my experience interviewing Lopez:
I originally interviewed Jennifer Lopez for ELLE magazine. She had been suffering from the flu after giving birth to her twins just a few months earlier. She was in a vulnerable state. She had already cancelled a previous appointment the day that I arrived at her home on Long Island when she was still married to Marc Anthony. Alas, I had not gotten the message that she wanted to cancel yet again because she still wasn't feeling well. But she was a good sport and agreed to see me that day since I was already there. She didn't have to it, so I was deeply appreciative of her willingness to go through with the interview once I later discovered that she had wanted to cancel it. When I look back on it, I do wonder - even though she denied it - if she were suffering from a bit of postpartum depression if one can indeed suffer just a bit of such a thing just as it is said one can't be just a little bit pregnant. I remember thinking what a sport she was to see me that day and what a pro she was - and how moved I was by the lack of vanity it took for her to allow me to see her in the utter "realness" of her real life.
I had been told by my editor at ELLE to go in and get the story because we had so far only booked that one day to do the interview. Back in those days one often had more than one session with a subject, especially for a cover story. There was often two or three visits stretched out over a week. I followed my orders from ELLE; I went in to get the story. Lopez never went off the record and was willing to answer all my questions, some of which were, yes, a bit impertinent and probing. But that was sort of my trademark as a cover story writer. I never wrote hit job. But I could fashion a story into an impertinent puff piece. Impertinence and puffery were my incongruous calling cards.
Lopez, however, didn't take to my line of questioning and contacted ELLE and wanted me to be removed from the story as a way to kill the impending puff piece that was a bit too impertinent for her taste regarding her image. I assumed ELLE - since I had just been doing what I was told to do - would stand by me. Instead, they stood with Lopez against their own writer and fired me from the story at, I presumed, her behest.
I was not happy. I checked my contract. I saw that I owned my notes and tapes and I was contractually not allowed to sell a story to another print publication. This was before the avalanche of digital media and a digital outlet was not mentioned in the contract. I had already been consulting with my former Vanity Fair boss, Tina Brown, on the launch of her new endeavor back then, TheDailyBeast.com, and saw a way to get the story published. I called Tina. Told her what had transpired. And told her, too, we had a story for the launch week of her new site. ELLE, in the meantime, published some sort of jejune short piece to run with their Lopez photos since she had held out the extra photo shoots needed as leverage to get me fired or she would not do the extra days of shooting. After ELLE wouldn't stand by me, I lay low for a couple of months waiting for the story I had planned to write to appear on TheDailyBeast.com's second day of its launch.
Word finally began to leak though that I had planned to publish the story somewhere else. I got calls from Lopez's PR people telling me I was not allowed to publish in any other magazine. I let them vent knowing they were just doing their jobs. I told them I was within my rights. I never mentioned a digital format.
But then it was figured out what Tina and TheDailyBeast.com and I were up to. I received threatening letters from Lopez's legal team telling me I would be sued for $1 million if I published even on a digital platform. Tina and the Beast's lawyers were backing me up, however, and we called their bluff. They promised me they had my back. And they did. Tina and the Beast - and Barry Diller who owned it - were honorable in their word to me. I felt safe working for them. I felt protected.
The story caused a bit of a sensation but I never once named ELLE as the magazine for which I had done the story nor ever publicly commented on the brouhaha while it was going on. I have never, in fact, commented on the experience for any media outlet. This is the first time I've ever written about it.
This is what The New York Times and the late media reporter David Carr had to say about it all when Tina launched TheDailyBeast.com:
"Ms. Brown does not appear to have lost her touch for creating a stir. On Tuesday, the site’s second day of existence, Ms. Brown published an interview with Jennifer Lopez by Kevin Sessums, a longtime celebrity profiler — an article killed by an unnamed women’s fashion magazine, in which he asks her about Scientology, breast feeding, a nervous breakdown and selling pictures of her twins. Those old magazine connections can come in mighty handy.
"Within hours gawker.com was speculating about which magazine had spiked the piece; New York magazine’s site, nymag.com, had teased apart Ms. Lopez’s 'breakdown'; and popsugar.com was drooling over the interview’s naughtier bits. After a long time on the sidelines, Ms. Brown was back in the middle of the game, or at least the conversation."
But even convincing Tina to run the story was the last hurdle I had to maneuver. She initially wanted to run excerpts from the Q and A transcript of my interview. But I insisted that the story itself run. The compromise however was an edited version highlighted by topic headings.
So here for the first time is the initial draft of the story that caused all this pop cultural tsuris. I have, in fact, spotted Jennifer Lopez, at parties in the years since and have been tempted to make an amends to her about the trouble I caused, but then I realize I didn't do anything wrong for which to make an amends. I did my job really well. I wrote a lovely story about a lovely woman who was rather vulnerable the day I met her. There is nothing to regret nor feel sorry about. I liked Lopez that day I met her for this story. I liked her a lot. I still like her. There have been times I've even admired her. I wish her nothing but happiness and even more massive success.
Here's the first draft of that first time I met Jennifer Lopez. I still think it is one of the best celebrity profiles I ever wrote even though it was never published in its entirety until now.
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