Ben Affleck Broke Matt Damon’s The Odyssey Casting News Before His Wife Could
Matt Damon explained why Ben Affleck was the first person he rang about his Odyssey casting.
When Matt Damon landed a role in The Odyssey , the first person to break the news to his wife wasn’t Matt — it was Ben Affleck. Damon says he spent about half an hour on the phone with Affleck while they were both at an office in Los Angeles, hung up, and immediately got a text from his wife asking why she’d heard it from Ben first — because Affleck had literally sprinted into her office to tell her.
“I was on the phone with him for about 30 minutes... they were at the office in LA. I hung up with him, and my wife texted me: ‘Why didn't you tell me first?’ Cause Ben had run into her office to tell her.”
Damon shared the story on 100 Questions with Tom Simons with Tom Holland , turning a big career moment into a very on-brand Affleck-and-Damon anecdote.
Old friends, new chapters
The two grew up together in Cambridge, Massachusetts, long before Good Will Hunting made them Oscar winners and one of Hollywood ’s most famous duos. They’ve stayed in each other’s orbit ever since — trading scripts, riding awards seasons, launching ventures — including their production company Artists Equity and recent projects like The Rip.
Affleck’s AI move at Netflix
Affleck’s latest play is in tech. According to a federal filing, Netflix paid $587 million in cash to acquire his AI startup InterPositive, folding the 16-person team into the streamer while Affleck stays on as a senior adviser.
InterPositive is built to help with post-production — working on footage that’s already been shot to save time without replacing human decision-making. The tools are designed to:
- Refine lighting and exposure on scenes
- Fix continuity hiccups
- Adjust or clean up backgrounds
- Speed up edits that would otherwise be manual
The purchase dovetails with Netflix’s broader push into generative AI; the company says roughly 300 titles this year have used some form of the tech. Even so, Netflix leadership continues to stress that human creators stay at the center, with AI positioned as a tool rather than a replacement.