J.Lo's director breaks down the wildest details in 'This Is Me...Now,' from casting actors as her exes to that cameo-laden 'zodiac council'

• Jennifer Lopez's "This Is Me...Now" is an extravagant movie inspired by real-life heartbreak.
• It includes indulgent flourishes like a cameo-packed "Zodiac Council" and a literal heart factory.

In her three-decade career, Jennifer Lopez has topped the charts and the box office — sometimes simultaneously. She's done almost everything, from garnering Oscar buzz to performing at the Super Bowl halftime show with Shakira. But along the way, she also weathered pain and rejection from several high-profile breakups.

Lopez's romantic and emotional transformation is the subject of "This Is Me…Now," her new album and accompanying film of the same name. Inspired by real heartbreaks, hangups, and the healing that led her back to now-husband Ben Affleck, the hourlong musical, out now on Prime Video, is nothing short of an ambitious spectacle.

That's exactly what director Dave Meyers was going for. The veteran music video director, who met Lopez in 2001 when he directed her video for "I'm Real" as well as the remix featuring Ja Rule, wanted to pitch Lopez something splashy. The plan, he says, was to tell an "abstract, Pink Floyd-like story" that functions as a "loose biopic that captures the essence of Jen."

The result is a deliberately self-indulgent opus packed with fantastical dreamscapes and choreography-laden musical numbers. It's all woven together by Lopez's narration, which is largely told via sessions with her therapist, played by Fat Joe (yes, really — and that's just one of many celebrity cameos).

If that sounds like a lot, it's because it is. And that was on purpose.

Below, Meyers unpacks the key moments from his and Lopez's maximalist creative vision.

The original script was much longer, but the project was scaled back after they 'cut the budget in half'

Meyers and Lopez conceived of the idea for "This Is Me…Now: A Love Story," without considering potential budgetary or creative limitations.

"The original conception really was two kids in a candy store," Meyers said. "Once I got her into the sphere of wildness, we brainstormed out a full-length, 150-page script."

Once they began shopping the film to different distributors, however, they were forced to "cut the budget in half." (Lopez recently told Variety she kicked in $20 million of her own money to complete the project.)

"When we got consolidated, yeah, we had to have the tough conversation of, 'What goes, what stays?' And so she was very involved in that," Meyers said.

Every remaining scene, no matter how surreal, serves a metaphorical purpose

Despite the pared-down script, the movie's final cut includes an array of sets, songs, and elaborate metaphors. For Meyers, Lopez's "emotional journey" is the connective thread, transforming a series of eclectic events into a complete story arc.

After a storybook-style introduction, Lopez appears onscreen riding on the back of a motorcycle, gripping Affleck's waist. They zoom over a tranquil, sunset-dappled lake before Affleck loses control; they suffer a spectacular crash.

"Heartbreak is huge stakes. It's life or death," Meyers explained. "Riding the motorcycle through the waters of Bolivia was really about the dreaminess of love, of course, and then what happens."

Another scene, set to the song "Rebound," shows Lopez wrestling with a violent partner who traps her in a glass house. It represents love's "fragility," Meyers said, especially when combined with toxic relationship cycles.

Later, Lopez attends a Love Addicts Anonymous meeting in a nondescript gymnasium, where she makes confessions about her own "restless heart." She also performs the song "Broken Like Me" with choreography that resembles interpretative dance.

"Love AA is really about being stripped away — no CG, no effects. It's just... raw Jen,'" Meyers said. "And also to change the dance style there, to not be hip-hop or to be a traditional Jen-style movement, to have it be something that was a little more abstracted and a little more uncomfortable for her as a character."

The 'heart factory' was directly inspired by Lopez and Affleck's breakup

Directly after the motorcycle crash, we find Lopez in a postapocalyptic world where she labors to keep a massive mechanical heart operational. Other workers harvest red flower petals — but the flowers are dying, and the heart is failing.

Lopez dons protective gear, determined to fix the mighty machine. But once she gets inside, she blacks out and wakes up in her therapist's office.

"So that's when the dreams started, you think? With that heartbreak?" he asks.

"Yeah, I think so. I had never felt anything like that before," she replies. "Honestly, I thought I was gonna die."

According to Meyers, the scene was directly inspired by Lopez and Affleck's broken engagement 20 years ago.

"It stemmed from Jen telling me, quite emotionally told me about — I don't even know how resolved it is — but how their first breakup was very, very heavy on her," he explained. "She opened up more than I thought she would about what that was for her, and I could see that there's a lot of pain there still."

Lopez and Affleck, nicknamed "Bennifer," were the subject of intense media scrutiny during their nascent relationship. This included "sexist, racist" vitriol directed toward Lopez, Affleck said.

The couple announced the postponement of their wedding in 2003 due to "excessive media attention." They confirmed their split in 2004.

Meyers decided to depict the breakup as a high-stakes action sequence, full of danger and drama: blaring alarms, panicked crowds, fiery explosions.

"This heartbreak that she went through is very real, and how do we tell an audience that couldn't give a shit?" Meyers explained. "A Jen fan would give a shit, but I mean, a calloused audience that would be like, 'Oh, who cares. You've got it all,' kind of thing. How do we show the stakes and the magnitude and the volume of what heartbreak feels like for everyone, but also for her?"

To visualize the heart factory, Meyers drew inspiration from films like "Titanic" and "Howl's Moving Castle" to capture the sheer scale of romantic peril.

"Jen's got this raw toughness to her, and so I wanted to figure out how to exploit that," he said. "I just thought, 'She would be someone who would work her fucking ass off to make sure the heart doesn't die' — and she has in real life."

Every cameo for the Zodiac Council was filmed separately

As we follow Lopez in her relentless pursuit of true love, we're occasionally treated to commentary from her "Zodiac Council."

The group functions as a celestial peanut gallery, observing Lopez's mistakes from above and offering theories to help her. Each actor portrays a different zodiac sign, and it's a star-studded bunch — no pun intended. Keke Palmer (Scorpio) frets, "What's with her and all the bad boys?" Post Malone (Leo) quips, "Maybe it's daddy issues." Later, Jane Fonda (Sagittarius) compares Lopez's love life to a 4 a.m. "Vanderpump Rules" marathon.

In addition to being comedic relief, Meyers said the council is meant to represent social media — a bunch of strangers weighing in on celebrity affairs with no real stake in the game.

But these onlookers are wiser, and more empathetic than tabloids and meme-makers online. They root for Lopez and defend her honor, acting as a guide for the audience amid the chaos. Trevor Noah (Libra) warns against indulging in sexist labels like "maneater." Neil deGrasse Tyson (Taurus) tells us to trust the flow of the universe.

But coordinating these scenes with 12 different schedules was no small feat. In the end, each actor filmed their cameo separately, so the dialogue was constantly tweaked.

"That was the hardest scene to do because we probably rewrote the script 50 times," Meyers said. "The tonality of that conversation changes based on who's in it."

"It was all an effort to just try to make it feel effortless," he added.

The ex-husband characters were cast to intentionally avoid resembling real-life people

Before Lopez goes to Love AA and looks inward to solve her problems, there's a memorable marriage montage set to her single "Can't Get Enough."

In this scene, Lopez ties the knot with three different men at identical wedding ceremonies. Her guests scoff and take bets about how long each union is going to last. (The answer? Not very long.)

None of these men are named in the movie. They're credited simply as "Husband No. 1" (Tony Bellissimo), "Husband No. 2" (Derek Hough), and "Husband No. 3" (Trevor Jackson).

In fact, Meyers said he and Lopez were careful to cast actors who didn't "accidentally depict" a real person from Lopez's life.

"We tried to make the film not really about those specific people because it isn't," Meyers explained. "She could have married any three people."

"What we need to show is the overbearing enthusiasm that this character has, that maybe marriage will lead her to love," he continued. "Maybe the second marriage will. Well, maybe the third marriage — ah, fuck it. None of these marriages. Love and marriage have nothing to do with each other."

The anonymity of each husband drives home the movie's thesis: Lopez is the star of her own life.

This isn't a story about failed relationships, or even about reuniting with Affleck in the end. It's about finding the strength to look inward, confront the past, and learn from those patterns.

"She is speaking a truth that she went through," Meyers said. "She's not gossiping or shitting on anybody. This is her journey. She's unapologetic about what she's been through, and she's very happy where she is now."

This is her, after all.