Jennifer Garner just pulled back the curtain on Ben Affleck’s obsessive creative process: Beyoncé’s “Halo” on loop while he wrote and directed The Town—all while she nursed their newborn in a cramped Cambridge rental.
Speaking Thursday night at L.A.’s Diesel Bookstore alongside The Last Thing He Told Me author Laura Dave and actress Rita Wilson, Jennifer Garner laughed her way through a memory that will resonate with every sleep-deprived parent married to a filmmaker on a deadline.
“Do you guys do this? Do you listen to a song over and over again?” Garner asked the crowd before dropping the anecdote: while she was nursing their three-month-old daughter Seraphina and chasing a three-year-old Violet around a temporary Cambridge apartment, Ben Affleck was in the next room hammering out his 2010 Boston heist masterpiece—to the infinite repeat of Beyoncé’s “Halo.”
Why “Halo” Mattered to Affleck’s Creative Process
Garner’s throwaway line is actually a gold-plated insight into how Affleck works. The director has long admitted he builds sonic “mood loops” to stay inside a scene’s emotional temperature. People confirms he cycled the power ballad for weeks, using its swelling crescendos to mirror the film’s core tension between love and betrayal.
“Halo” is built on a church-organ swell and a heartbeat kick-drum—perfect scaffolding for a crime saga about a thief who wants absolution he’ll never earn. Affleck’s commentary-track confession that he “writes to tempo” suddenly makes perfect sense: the 96-bpm pulse of “Halo” matches the editorial rhythm he later used in The Town’s climactic Fenway Park heist sequence.
The Timeline: Babies, Beyoncé and Bank-Robbery Editing
- Jan 2009 – Seraphina Affleck is born; Garner is nursing an infant while wrangling a toddler.
- Spring 2009 – Production offices open in Cambridge; Affleck locks himself in a rental to rewrite the script.
- Summer 2009 – “Halo” becomes the unofficial soundtrack; Garner jokes she can “still hear the synth intro in her dreams.”
- Sept 2010 – The Town premieres to rave reviews, nabbing Affleck a DGA nomination and Jeremy Renner an Oscar nod.
Garner’s Bigger Point: Surviving the Artist Spouse
Garner wasn’t just gossiping; she was commiserating with Dave, who confessed she also loops songs while drafting novels. The moment humanizes the oft-romanticized “artist’s process,” reminding fans that behind every auteur is a partner fielding juice-box requests and diaper duty to the same four-minute song on endless repeat.
Her anecdote also reframes the couple’s 2015 separation narrative: the family didn’t fracture because of one dramatic incident but because the “actual breaking up of a family is hard,” as she told Marie Claire UK earlier this month. The Beyoncé loop becomes a metaphor—beautiful, relentless, ultimately exhausting.
Where They Stand Now
Garner and Affleck’s relationship has “evolved into the strongest friendship it’s ever been,” a source told Us Weekly in March 2025. The actress—currently promoting her Apple TV+ series alongside Dave and Wilson—can finally laugh about the sonic watermark on her sleepless year, proof that time really does “offer the opportunity to heal.”
And for pop-culture detectives, the revelation adds a new layer to The Town: every time Rebecca Hall’s character gazes at Affleck with wounded trust, you’re secretly watching Beyoncé’s hymn to doomed devotion echo through Boston’s alleys.
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