Are Jennifer Lopez’s Love Interests in This is Me…Now: A Love Story Based on Her Real Exes?

Spoilers ahead.

Jennifer Lopez’s film project, This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, is not an autobiography, but it also is very much rooted in Lopez’s real life. Lopez, who stars as the Artist in the film, begins the story mourning the breakup of a great love, the Biker, played by her husband, Ben Affleck.

Lopez goes on to have five other love interests in the film before ending up with the Biker at the end. Four of her onscreen partners are portrayed as more serious characters, while another is just a date she arrives home with before her friends stage an intervention.

So are those more significant love interests, particularly her three husbands (played by Tony Bellissimo, Derek Hough, and Trevor Jackson) during the wedding scene, based on her actual three real husbands before Affleck?

And is her rebound lover in the glass house shown immediately after her Biker breakup, named “The New Guy” and played by Gilbert Saldivar, based on Marc Anthony?

Here’s what we know.

Lopez said This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is fictional but draws from her real-life experiences.

In a press conference ahead of the film’s release, Lopez addressed how the film just draws inspiration from her real life.

“There’s not a project that I’ve ever been involved with, music or movies or anything, that I didn’t put a bunch of my life into and a lot of my personal experience,” she said. “I think as an artist, that’s all you really have to draw on, the experience you have and the personal experience and the experience of other people around you that you’ve born witness to. I think with this one, I really wanted to … It seemed like such an important moment in my life, kind of a turning point in my life, and I was at a point in my life where, as a person and as an artist, I could really look at all of the things that I was good at and the things that I felt and knew about myself and put them all into this project in a way. So things professionally, but also personally.

“So yes, there’s parts of it that feel kind of very autobiographical, and then there’s parts of it that are kind of meta, not quite in a way, not exactly what happened, but also the feeling of that is what happened. So there was different things about it that were super honest and true, and then there was things that were kind of more for license, taking license and really doing what was best for the entertainment and storytelling of the film, I think. That mix of it, being personal but also being able to be fantastical, surreal, magical is what I think makes it really kind of moving, entertaining, and at the same time, super real.”

Is the rebound character based on Lopez’s ex, Marc Anthony?

It might be easy to imagine that the glass house rebound partner, played by Saldivar, could represent Anthony due to their resemblance and where their relationship falls compared to Lopez’s actual relationship history. The glass house scene happens after her breakup from the Biker, the literal Affleck stand-in.

In real life, Lopez announced her breakup from Affleck in January 2004. She and Anthony started dating in early 2004 and got married on June 5, 2004.

This theory becomes more disturbing, however, when you consider how toxic Saldivar’s character is.

Lopez addressed this in her Variety interview released earlier this week. She would not say if that character was based on a specific person, just that it was true to her journey. One major hint? The character was a Libra, while Anthony is a Virgo, born on Sept. 16, 1968.

“The idea of the glass house was about how we get into these toxic relationships,” Lopez said of the song concept. “You have trauma from your past. You have these patterns you haven’t figured out yet. And you get into these relationships where you compromise yourself in ways that you never thought you would. Or you allow people to treat you in ways that you never thought you would. And that certainly has happened to me.”

Are the three husbands in the wedding sequence based on Lopez’s past three husbands?

The only hint around the husbands’ identities was given by the zodiac council, which listed their star signs: Pisces, Virgo, and Cancer. That said, the husbands are thinly sketched characters who are not in the film very long. They’re also shown in couple’s therapy citing their problems with Lopez, saying she’s too focused on work, she ignores them, or they feel like they’re not enough for her.

Only one of Lopez’s three real-life husbands has a matching star sign with an onscreen counterpart.

Ojani Noa, Lopez’s first husband (married from 1997-1998), is a Gemini, born on June 11, 1974. He and Lopez were friends for many years after their breakup. He spoke to Daily Mail after Lopez got married to Affleck about what happened between them. “We were together romantically for two years but friends for nearly a decade,” he said. “We fell in love when she was already famous. But during our marriage she became a megastar.”

He admitted to jealousy being an issue, as Lopez was photographed out with P. Diddy during their marriage. “I rang Jen and asked why she was going out with him on dates and she said, ‘It’s just business. This is what I’m being told I have to do.’ I was jealous and would scream, ‘But you are married!’”

Noa and Lopez circa 1998.

Cris Judd, Lopez’s second husband (married from 2001-2003), is a Leo, born on Aug. 15, 1969. He spoke to Us Weekly in September 2014 about why his relationship with Lopez didn’t work. “You know it’s very tough,” he said. “Your privacy is breached. You’re no longer a normal person. [Our wedding] was a circus. I think several people got arrested trying to climb up a mountain… trying to sneak in. We actually rented the airspace.”

That said, he did not blame her fame on why their marriage ended. “Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out,” he said.

Judd and Lopez at the 2002 Vanity Fair Oscar Party.

And Anthony, Lopez’s third husband (married from 2004-2014, separated in 2011), is a Virgo. So there’s a match there.

Lopez spoke to W about their breakup in May 2016. “When my marriage ended, it was not easy to find forgiveness,” she said. “It wasn’t the dream that I had hoped for, and it would have been easier to fan the flames of resentment, disappointment and anger. But Marc is the father of my children, and that’s never going away. So I have to work to make things right. And that is, by far, the hardest work I do.”

“I hung in there for seven years,” she added. “I knew very quickly that it wasn’t the right thing.”

Anthony and Lopez at the 2011 Golden Globes.