By Becky Howard, This is London

“The worst piece of advice I ever took?” Film director Kevin Smith leans back against the sofa in a suite at the Dorchester Hotel and mulls it over. “It must have been Ben (Affleck) saying ‘Dude, cast my girlfriend in the movie. She’ll be awesome.’ No, I’m kidding!”

You can’t blame the New Jersey auteur for being a little bitter, though. After a decade which saw him shoot to fame on the back of uber-low budget movie Clerks, and carve out a niche in making funny, faintly controversial movies, Smith decided to go mainstream. He’d already tackled Catholicism (1999’s Dogma), a lesbian ‘going straight’ (1997’s Chasing Amy) and become a cult hero as one half of stoner duo Jay and Silent Bob, so making a touching film about a father’s relationship with his young daughter should have been a breeze. Right? Wrong – Bennifer hit town.

Casting long-time Smith muse Ben Affleck as Ollie Trinke alongside Jennifer Lopez as his wife – a much smaller role – obviously smacked of box office gold two years ago when the 33-year-old began making Jersey Girl, a love letter to his family. But once tabloid coverage of the Affleck/Lopez union reached critical mass and their disastrous flick Gigli was roundly mauled, it became clear that Jersey Girl would become an undeserved victim of their over-hyped relationship.

A somewhat muted Smith, clad in his typical uniform of outsized sports t-shirt and cropped trousers, has obviously had to explain this story many times before: “A lot of people assume that I cast them and knew they were dating. But they weren’t. He called me up and was like, ‘I was thinking who would be good to play Gertrude: Jennifer Lopez,’ as they’d just wrapped Gigli and got on really well.

“So we put it into motion and got Jennifer Lopez, and it was quite the coup. But it wasn’t until he showed up to the set a month before we started shooting I learned they were dating. And I was like, “Ah… no wonder he was so supportive! No wonder he wanted her to play his wife!”

Even though Affleck and Lopez had split up by the time Jersey Girl hit American multiplexes in March, the public had already swallowed the unwarranted ‘Gigli 2′ tag which attached itself to Jersey Girl. The backlash has obviously stung Smith, although he recognises the point at which it all went wrong.

“Mosier (Scott, Smith’s longtime producer) saw it when Affleck appeared in Jen’s music video for Jenny From The Block. He said then that it was bad f****** news. He was like, ‘I understand what they’re trying to accomplish. The whole story of the video is about tabloid intrusion, but the point is lost and it just makes them look arrogant.’ And he was right. People just saw it as them going, ‘We’re so rich, and so successful, and so pretty – feel bad for us.’
“The moment I knew we were in trouble with their relationship was when we test screened the movie. In the focus group you ask people, ‘How would you suggest this movie to a friend?’ And one guy said, ‘I would tell my friends to go and see it because J.Lo dies.’ And it became clear that people just didn’t like her, and didn’t like the two of them together. It just created this enmity from the people. Weird.”

Bearing all this in mind, does Smith regret any of his casting decisions? “I don’t really have a regret. I mean, I regret the s***storm that surrounded our poor little movie because of their relationship, but I don’t regret their relationship because they were quite a cute couple together, and really into one another. And I don’t regret casting either one of them, because them being in the movie made the movie what it is. But having to follow Gigli did wind up affecting us.”

Moving away from Bennifer – and newly-wed Lopez certainly has – Jersey Girl itself is a little gem. A softer, more sentimental story than one might expect from the man who created the Poop Monster in Dogma, and the Clit Commander in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Smith tackles issues of juggling single parenthood with career needs skillfully. But thankfully it’s shot through with a healthy dose of his trademark sarky wit.

Did Smith feel that after years of dick’n’fart jokes, that it was time to grow up?

“Yeah, I did,” he asserts, getting comfy on the floor in front of the sofa. “I wanted to make this movie that’s been swimming around in my head for a while, because I wasn’t raised on movies like Clerks and Mallrats. Chasing Amy was more the type of ‘dramedy’ that I was raised on and that I was a big fan of. So sooner or later I was going to get to one of these – a feelgood tearjerker, so to speak.

“Thankfully, this wound up being good timing, because I couldn’t make a movie with Jason Mewes (Jay) again, because he was so knee-deep in heroin and OxyContin at the time. All the rehab counsellors were like: ‘You’ve got to cut him loose and turn your back on him and basically practice tough love.’ So that freed me up to pursue this.”

With Affleck, Lopez and Liv Tyler in place, Smith now had to find the titular Jersey Girl – the offspring of Ben and Jennifer’s characters. Searching for the right ‘look’ led him to Raquel Castro, a bright-eyed, natural actress with an uncanny resemblance to the former couple. But it wasn’t just the superficial sheen that charmed Smith – he wanted to avoid the ubiquitous stage-school brat.

“She had to come across like a real little kid,” he says. “I didn’t want to just cast a movie-cute kid, because so often they’re so cute you want to throw them through a f****** wall, you know? But for my money, I think most kids around that age (7), are starting to discover that adults are as full of s*** as anybody. They’re not always precious. Raquel really brought that realness to it.”

Add in a Will Smith cameo – “Nicest guy on the planet. I used to think Affleck was the nicest guy in the movie business, but Affleck is a f****** ogre compared to Will Smith” – and there’s a cast of top actors doing a sterling job in a quality movie. Yet the poor publicity afforded to JG led him to receive a drubbing from the British press, too. The night of the low-key UK premiere saw an caustically funny Smith lay into the Mirror’s 3AM girls, for printing a speculative story that day about an unwell Affleck’s absence from the event.

Smith won’t go back on his words: “The 3am girls piece was full of bulls*** – I mean, saying the movie was a disaster Stateside? It’s not! We made £25m bucks. A disaster is Gigli. So I hate s*** like that and calling it a turkey – why? Based on what source? It seemed just like sour grapes because Ben didn’t show up, and them saying he was ashamed of the movie. And meanwhile, a couple months ago when we released the movie in the States, that dude did more press on this movie than any other movie he’s done in recent history. Do a little f***ing research, that’s what I say.”

But despite his experience at the hands of the tabloids, Smith is entranced by our celeb culture: “Nothing compares with England’s fascination with celebrities. The one thing I find refreshing is to open up a British publication and see someone they’re insisting is famous and you’re like ‘Who the f*** is that?’

“I was looking at Hello or one of those and there was some girl there, some chick Jade from Big Brother? What’s that? A reality show? So, even though the show was a couple years ago, she’s still famous? Wow. That’s insane.”

For now, though, Smith’s “mired in the aftermath” of Jersey Girl, and freely admits that it will take him some time to enjoy it fully. “I love the movie and it means something to me, but I think it’ll be a while before I can kick back and appreciate it like I did when I first put it together. It’s been clouded by the s*** we had to put up with. But hopefully one day there will be a generation that’s never heard of Bennifer.”

And despite all the heartache Smith’s endured over his movie, he still vehemently sticks by the film’s ethos, which sees Ollie forswear a high-flying career for the sake of his child. But would he really give it all up for his kid? ”

Absolutely. Absolutely,” Smith confirms. “This is the one time where I’ve come up against journalists who get really dug in on this issue. Some people think it’s inauthentic, or disingenuous, or very Hollywood. My take on it is: most people who take issue with the idea of giving up a career for somebody feel like they’re being judged because they like their career. I say, ‘Do you have a kid?’ And they’re like, ‘No.’ So I say, talk to me when you’ve got a kid because then it’s a whole different story.

“Luckily I have this gig where I get to do both. But I would put my family ahead of my career in a heartbeat.” No doubt he would, but lets hope Smith doesn’t have to.