Jennifer Lopez on How Her "Twin Soul" Alex Rodriguez Inspires Her Business Acumen

Published on Nov 19, 2020 at 8:20 PM

Gray Sorrenti for WSJ. Magazine

Jennifer Lopez has truly done it all. From launching a new skin-care line to bidding to buy the New York Mets, not to mention her icon status as both a singer and actress, it's tough to find a venture the multihyphenate has yet to touch. So it comes as no surprise that J Lo was presented with WSJ. Magazine's pop culture innovator award and subsequently featured as the magazine's November 2020 cover star.

In the cover story, the 51-year-old star opened up about her personal and business relationship with fiancé Alex Rodriguez (who actually inspired her to build JLo Beauty), her evolving business strategy juggling the various silos of her career, and her desire to show women how to be powerful. Alongside a series of stunning photos of J Lo wearing some damn good outfits, read ahead for her standout quotes on growing her career "to another level" with ARod, the eye-opening moment she had with her twins Emme and Max while in quarantine, and that disappointing Oscars snub.

On her relationship with Alex Rodriguez: "I think where we're twin souls, or whatever term you want to use, is in the way that there are no limits — that we're limitless. That's my thing, but he helped me realize how true that is. We can do anything. We both have that DNA — like, why not? Why can't we build not one multibillion-dollar business, but three or four? Why can't we own the Mets?"
On empowering women: "I feel youthful and I feel powerful and I want to show women how to be powerful. There was a lot of symbolism in the performance at the Super Bowl. I wanted to be at the top of the Empire State Building, like King Kong, beating my chest: 'I'm here!' You know? It's a very powerful thing to use your femininity and your sensuality. We are here and we matter. We deserve to be equal. You have to count us."

On shifting her business strategy: "I had been challenging [manager] Benny [Medina] for a while on our business stuff because I just felt like we weren't doing it right. I realized this when I sat down with my perfume company and they showed me all these numbers. And they said to me, 'We've made a billion dollars.' . . . And then they said, 'We have a plan to get to $2 billion and this is how we're going to do it and we want to re-sign you.' I'm sitting there going, 'You made a billion dollars? I came up with the perfume. I came up with the name. I'm marketing it. It's my face in the ads. I didn't make that kind of money. Where is the billion dollars?"
On managing her career: "There's the entertainment silo. There's the investment silo. There's the building businesses silo. And in the entertainment silo, there's a producing silo, an acting silo, a performing silo and the music silo. And everything needs to be managed and looked after properly, right?"

On the response to Hustlers: "I was really taken aback by the reaction. Not that I didn't think it was good. I was proud of my performance, but that hadn't happened to me since Selena. It'd been more than 20 years since I'd gotten those kinds of accolades."
On playing a pop star similar to herself in Marry Me: "It was very meta . . . It was a cathartic experience, and I had to constantly remind myself: Put everything that you've lived here. I play a pop star who has her own brand and has been around for a while and has been in and out of bad relationships. I would say to myself, 'You don't have to act here. You just have to show your pure essence and it's gonna work. It'll be right.'"

On what she learned from her kids in quarantine: "I actually loved being home and having dinner with the kids every night, which I hadn't done in probably — ever. And the kids kind of expressed to me, like, the parts that they were fine with about our lives and the parts they weren't fine with. It was just a real eye-opener and a reassessment, to really take a look at what was working and what wasn't working. You thought you were doing OK, but you're rushing around and you're working and they're going to school and we're all on our devices. We're providing this awesome life for them, but at the same time, they need us. They need us in a different way. We have to slow down and we have to connect more. And, you know, I don't want to miss things."