Jennifer Garner pulled out of Netflix’s Animals over ‘baggage’ she feared would follow her into the role
The film was it by several behind-the-scenes casting issues before finally going into production
Animals arrives at Netflix on October 9, but it's taken more than one attempt and several casting changes to get it there.
In the film, Ben Affleck stars as Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate who is thrown into a web of deception along with his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) when their son is kidnapped.
Rushing to pull together money for the ransom payment, the choices they make and secrets revealed could rip their world apart.
While the crime thriller will bring plenty of action, it's also an exploration of how a marriage can possibly survive something so drastic.
While writing the script, Ben tells EW he had several things on his mind that he wanted viewers to think about while watching.
"How do you maintain a relationship?" he asks, adding that he was questioning, "What does a marriage really require of us? How well can we know one another? And what happens to that bond when 'something so scary happens in your life' that you’re forced to re-evaluate those questions?"
Ironically, the concept of marriage was the the very awkward reason Jennifer Garner pulled out of the role of Abigail, and was replaced by Kerry Washington.
When Animals was first announced in January 2024, Ben's good friend and long-time collaborator Matt Damon was poised to play Mark Kimball, and Ben's ex-wife Jennifer Garner was confirmed for the role of Abigail.
Gillian Anderson also stars as a specialist consultant in kidnappings, and Beef's Steven Yeun plays Mark Kimball's campaign manager. While both stars remain in their roles, Matt Damon and Jennifer Garner exited theirs, and that's where things got challenging.
At a time all four leads were confirmed, the film was shelved because another with similar themes was due to be released at the same time (Apple TV's Highest 2 Lowest.)
Animals was going to be scrapped altogether, until Ben Affleck later thought to himself, "God, this is really sticking with me, and I actually wanna do this," and worked to get the film off the ground again.
However, by the time the movie was once again ready to go into production, Matt Damon was filming Odyssey and wasn't available to play Mark Kimball.
When Ben himself decided to take over the role, this left him in the very difficult position of playing opposite his former wife in a movie spending a lot of time examining a marriage falling apart.
Although he wanted to keep her on board, Jennifer's response to playing Abigail opposite her former husband was a resounding "no."
"I talked to Jen, and she was like, 'We don’t wanna do that. You just get baggage,'" he shares, adding that despite her being "fabulous" and "we’re really good friends," she couldn't return to the production.
Seeing her point of view, Ben says, "What you don’t wanna do is take the audience’s baggage and have it work against you, you know?"
When Kerry Washington took over from Jennifer, she was immediately intrigued by just how much the marriage of the central couple took centre stage in the film.
"It wasn’t a happy marriage, it was a pretty horrible dynamic between the two of them," she says of reading the script.
The actress concludes, "It was exciting to see the journey of their marriage through this traumatic unfolding of events. There are certain couples where, when tragedy strikes, or there’s a crisis at hand, it either moves them closer together or breaks them apart."
Animals airs on Netflix from October 9.
