Anthony Ramos quit Jennifer Lopez film because of her ex-husband Marc Anthony

Singer appears disheartened by 'Hamilton' star's decision in new documentary

Hamilton actor Anthony Ramos pulled out of Jennifer Lopez’s new movie This Is Me... Now because he didn’t want to offend her ex-husband.

Lopez opened up about the casting behind the “wild” and “wacky” movie, for which she invested $20m of her own money to tell the story of her reunion with husband Ben Affleck.

In the accompanying documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, Lopez is seen trying to persuade Ramos to play the role of toxic suitor in her performance of “Rebound” in the mystical romantic musical.

The song features Lopez dancing with her partner in a crumbling glass house as a cord connects the pair, which she struggles to sever.

In the documentary, Ramos is on the phone to Lopez and cannot be heard, but it is understood that he is expressing his discomfort that audiences may read his involvement as a critique of her marriage to Anthony.

“I didn’t know that you and Marc were good friends, I didn’t know that. But that’s nice,” she tells Ramos, as she explains her vision and the story she is hoping to tell.

“He’s the father of my kids, obviously. I’m never going to do anything that’s going to really pinpoint him out, but it is very meta. It’s kind of about the 20-year journey between that last album and this album, and a lot of things happened.

Anthony Ramos turned down the chance to perform with JLo on ‘Rebound’ for fear of offending Marc Anthony (Getty Images)

“There were a lot of relationships that I was in. The thing you’re playing is representative of many relationships, not one specific relationship.”

However, she was unable to change the In The Heights actor’s mind and dancer Gilbert Saldivar was eventually cast to play the role in “Rebound”.

Lopez married Anthony in 2004, shortly after the breaking of her engagement to Affleck. The Grammy award-winning salsa artist eventually filed for divorce in 2014. He went on to marry 23-year-old Nadia Ferreira in January last year and revealed they had a baby boy in June. The couple have a 31-year age gap.

Gilbert Saldivir played the role Lopez initially envisioned for Anthony Ramos (Amazon Prime Video)

The singer released her first studio album in over a decade, This Is Me... Now, earlier this year, along with an accompanying movie, This Is Me... Now: A Love Story, which was released on Prime Video on 18 February.

Directed by Jason Bergh, a description reads that the documentary “follows Jennifer Lopez as she attempts her most daring project yet: independently producing a new album and cinematic original that explore her twenty-year journey to self-love.”