Jennifer Garner rails against paparazzi who knocked over kids
Jennifer Garner rails against paparazzi who she says knocked over kids and disrupted family life just to photograph her and Ben Affleck, telling the "Shut Up Evan" podcast they were "so hungry to get at me" that the chase had spun out of control.
Key Takeaways
- Garner described paparazzi running red lights, driving onto lawns, and flooding her child's soccer games with roughly 20 cars.
- She recalled kids being "knocked over" leaving preschool by photographers "so hungry to get at" her or Ben Affleck.
- She said photographers once blocked her from a pediatrician visit while she carried a sick child.
- Two photographers have followed her for "20 plus years," a bond she likened to "Stockholm syndrome" even as she has called the police.
Garner used the interview to detail how aggressive photo pursuits shaped daily life with her children. Her comments, first reported by Variety, frame paparazzi pressure as a public-safety problem, not only a celebrity annoyance. More Hollywood and TV coverage lives in our Streaming & TV Alerts hub.
What did Jennifer Garner say about paparazzi endangering kids?
Garner told host Evan Katz that photographers would go to dangerous lengths for shots of her and her children. "If I went through a yellow light, 15 cars would go through the red behind me," she said. "They would drive up onto people's lawns, even on a hillside."
She also described trying to let her little one play soccer until the association asked the family to stop. About 20 cars were arriving with the photographers, she said, so the disruption spilled onto other families. "So it wasn't just about us. It was just an industry that had gotten out of control."
In another memory, Garner said she saw children "getting knocked over coming out of preschool by photographers who were so hungry to get at me or Ben [Affleck]." She argued the kids were "paying the price" when parents could not reach ordinary places safely.
Why did paparazzi target Garner and Affleck specifically?
Garner said she lived in a community full of celebrities, yet the photographers still focused on her. The reason, she explained, was that she "had the kids." That made school runs, medical visits, and youth sports especially fraught.
"If you show up and you're trying to get into the pediatrician and you have a sick kid on your shoulder and you're scared and you can't get into the door because you're blocked by photographers, there's something wrong with that," she said.
Has the paparazzi pressure on Garner eased over time?
When Katz asked whether things ever improved, Garner said she still has two photographers assigned to follow her for "20 plus years." Over that span, she said, they built an "odd respect for each other."
"Like, there's kind of a Stockholm syndrome thing," Garner said. She also said she has "called the cops on him a million times," asking for a simple walk around the block with her kids and dog. The mix of familiarity and confrontation showed how constant the chase remained.
Garner's podcast remarks underline why she rails against a photo culture she believes put children—and neighbors—in harm's way for a picture of her and Affleck.