by Gill Pringle in LA
Co-produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity banner, Jennifer Lopez signed on for the title role while she and Affleck were still wed.
But, if their marriage lasted barely two years, then today she’s receiving plenty of love from her fans, receiving a resounding standing ovation at Los Angeles’ Directors Guild this week when she presented the film for early audiences.
Visibly emotional, she fought back tears, saying, “I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life.”
If her typical movie stock is frothy romantic comedies, then this was a chance to work with respected Hollywood powerhouse Bill Condon, revered for directing Dreamgirls and Beauty and the Beast and writing the Oscar-winning Chicago.
“I read the script immediately – I read it in bed. I got it that night, and I was just laughing and smiling and thinking: ‘Wait a minute, I’m gonna sing, I’m gonna dance? I get to do 12 musical numbers. And I get to play three different characters? And work with Bill Condon…’ I’m wondering, ‘are you sure they offered this to me? It’s not a meeting, right?’” she recalls.
“It was like a dream. It’s something that I had been waiting for, probably since I was about eight years old, when I first saw West Side Story in front of the TV with my mom in my little house in the Bronx. It really was something I had always dreamt of, and here it was in front of me. And I just couldn’t believe it. I called right away and said: ‘Yes, I want to do it.’”
Based on Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, Kiss of the Spider Woman centres on a pair of cellmates in an Argentine prison. Valentin is a political revolutionary (Diego Luna) while Molina (Tonatiuh) is a gay window dresser who takes care of him by telling him the plots of his favourite films, particularly those featuring his favourite movie star, Ingrid Luna.
Lopez dazzles in the triple roles of screen diva Ingrid Luna and her Aurora and enigmatic Spider Woman screen personas.
If the role represents the culmination of a lifelong dream, then it’s not through lack of trying, previously auditioning for musicals Evita and Nine.
“I have never been offered a musical, which is crazy, I think. It is crazy! I’ve never been offered one,” she says, shaking her head.
There’s no false modesty here because it is crazy that a global song and dance superstar has never been offered a musical.
“I remember auditioning for Evita for Alan Parker. I had been practicing for weeks, and I sing my heart out and do my thing. And he goes: ‘You’re amazing. You know Madonna has the part, right?’ And I go: Okay, bye bye. Nice to meet you!’
“So, this is the first time, and it couldn’t have been a better one for me. I was really glad to be able to do it and step into [late legend] Chita Rivera’s shoes and Sonia Braga and everybody who did this role before me,” she says referring to both the Broadway version and the 1985 film which earned an Oscar for William Hurt.
But filming the arduous triple role – featuring no less than 12 song and dance routines – between March and June 2024, was tough. “We didn’t have a lot of time, because it was an independent film, and it was not like, we had four or five days to shoot one musical number. It just was like – ‘we have six hours,’” she says.
“And also [Bill] wanted to film everything like the old movie musicals, where they would do things in very long one take, one shots, and he’s like:’ I want you to do this because I know you can do a musical number from beginning to end because of your shows.’
“And I said: ‘Yes, I can.’ And he was like, ‘well, that’s how we’re going to do it.’ I was like, ‘we’ll do some coverage?’ He’s like, ‘no, no coverage.’ Fuck me! Okay, I better get it right then!”
“I’d be halfway through the take, and it’s going perfect. And then you trip on your dress or whatever, and then it’s like, ‘okay, maybe we start over.’ It was challenging in that way as independent films can be. It’s the time, the prep, it’s the budget, all of it were constraints for us. But we put our heart and soul into it, and we rehearsed like crazy for the time that we had and it was a beautiful thing. And, again, living my childhood dream so…” she says.
The film, with its queer storyline and gender-fluid main character, lands at a fraught political time in the US where Donald Trump takes a strict anti-trans stance.
None of which has lessened Lopez’s love for Spider Woman’s themes of inclusivity. “Love can shorten the gap of any divide between people. We could just look at each other, as individuals, as people, as human beings and not worry about who you like, who you don’t like, what your political beliefs are. It doesn’t matter. There’s another human on the other side of you and you will find something in common with them. You are both human and you both have a heart. And that, to me, is something that was so important when I read the movie and why I wanted to be part of it,” she said earlier in the year when the film was first unveiled at Sundance.
Indeed, when Lopez first signed on for the role, she and her long-time co-producer Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas also joined Affleck and Damon as co-producers.
She gets annoyed when people question her legitimacy as a producer.
“Yes, we’re real producers!” she exclaims. “It’s so funny. Somebody asked me that today: ‘What did you do as a producer?’ Fucking everything. Got the funds, you know, raise money? Everything from script to casting, every single part of the movie that the director – I always defer to the director – will let me be involved with or needs my help with. As a producer, that’s what you do. You support the director in making the movie that he wants to make, and then I would step back and do my little acting, singing, dancing thing,” she says modestly.
Even today, she still has a dreamlike expression when she thinks about what she has now accomplished. “My God, I grew up on musicals. I know all the musicals, and thanks to my mom, I do, because she was in love with not just musicals, but with movies. I grew up on them, and I really knew what this was. And, again, I’ve been waiting my whole life to do this. It’s not something I’m just saying. That is the truth. It is the real thing.”
Despite starring in 40+ films and enjoying billions of record sales, remarkably Lopez has never ticked off a single one of the prized EGOTs – Emmy, Grammy, Tony or Oscar, instead receiving vague awards as “legend” or “icon”.
If she received much praise and awards attention for her performance in 2019’s Hustlers, which many predicted would land the actress her first Oscar nomination, she went away empty handed.
But now, at 56 years old, perhaps her time has come.
Kiss of the Spider Woman is in cinemas 30 October 2025
