Anna Daniels
In an interview with The New York Times published in February 2020, Affleck revealed a harrowing concern people around him had while he was still attached to The Batman. Affleck had already been to hell and back during the troubled production and disappointing release of Justice League, and that reportedly “sapped his interest” in continuing to play the caped crusader. (He also told Jimmy Kimmel in February 2019 that he “just couldn’t come up with a version” of a Batman tale that he enjoyed — “I couldn’t crack it” — so he knew it was “time to let someone take a shot at it.”)
Knowing that Affleck was somewhat disconnected from the character and already down on his luck in the superhero movie realm, someone in Affleck’s life told him they were worried he wouldn’t make it out of production on The Batman alive. As Affleck detailed to The New York Times, “I showed somebody The Batman script. They said, ‘I think the script is good. I also think you’ll drink yourself to death if you go through what you just went through again.'”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Affleck explained the “vicious cycle” of discomfort and alcohol abuse that has had a grip on his life for quite some time.
“People with compulsive behavior, and I am one, have this kind of basic discomfort all the time that they’re trying to make go away. You’re trying to make yourself feel better with eating or drinking or sex or gambling or shopping or whatever. But that ends up making your life worse,” he said. “Then you do more of it to make that discomfort go away. Then the real pain starts. It becomes a vicious cycle you can’t break. That’s at least what happened to me.”
Affleck also revealed that he began “drinking more and more” around 2015 and 2016, when his marriage to Jennifer Garner “was falling apart.”
Written by: Looper
