A video of Ben Affleck speaking Spanish has taken the internet by storm. The actor surprised fans while promoting his R-rated sports movie Air, a true story based on Nike salesman Sonny Vaccaro’s successful signing of Michael Jordan. Affleck directed the film and also stars as businessman Phil Knight.
The video, posted to TikTok by Spanish radio network Cadena SER, has since been viewed more than 2.4 million times. Variety editor Clayton Davis, who boasts nearly 30,000 followers on Twitter, also shared the video, which has been watched another 556,000 times.
“Ben Affleck speaks better Spanish than I could ever hope to achieve,” Davis said, adding the hashtag, “AIRMovie.”
“Homie is legit fluent. Beyond talented,” one user said.
“So smooth, dare I say fluent?” another person wrote on Twitter. “This really encourages me to try learning Spanish again because maybe I can succeed in grasping it, too. What a gift to speak more than one language.”
One user wrote: “Okay… that was super impressive,” while a fourth chimed in, “J-Lo taught him well,” referring to Affleck’s wife, Jennifer Lopez.
However, Affleck learned Spanish long before he met the Latina superstar. Despite the internet’s surprise, Affleck has been open about his Spanish proficiency.
During an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show in March 2020, the dad of three—who shares kids Violet, 17, Seraphina, 15, and Samuel, 11, with ex-wife Jennifer Garner—said his daughter inspired him to brush up on his skills.
“I don’t mind that I can’t do your math homework,” he told Clarkson on the talk show of his teen daughter. “But you are not going be better at Spanish than me.”
In the TikTok clip, Affleck also explained in Spanish why Jordan won’t appear in the movie.
“The important thing to understand is that this is not Michael Jordan’s story, and Michael Jordan also does not appear in the movie,” he said.
“He’s so big, so important, so magnificent—there’s not an actor in the world who could lead the audience to believe, ‘Look, it’s Michael Jordan.’ Immediately, they are going to think, ‘All of this is s***. It’s a s*** movie. I don’t believe it.’ And it destroys (the movie) entirely.”
Jordan, 60, skyrocketed to fame while playing for the Chicago Bulls and went on to become one of the greatest sportsmen of all time. He agreed to the film being made as long as Viola Davis portrayed his mother in the flick.
Watch the video below:
Ben Affleck speaks better spanish than I could ever hope to achieve. #AIRMoviehttps://t.co/JNpFOZY3DZ via @variety pic.twitter.com/x4jIB1ChRO
— Clayton Davis (@ByClaytonDavis) April 5, 2023
