ICE Interrupted the Filming of ‘Animals’ and Ben Affleck Told Jorge Ramos It Changed Everything About the Movie

Ben Affleck sat down with journalist Jorge Ramos to talk about his new Netflix film “Animals” and left no doubt that this project was never going to be a detached creative exercise for him. He told Ramos that the United States is a country of immigrants, that his own people and his own family are immigrants, and that the story of Luis and Adriana, the two Mexican characters at the center of the film, is also the story of the United States itself. That framing is not a marketing angle but the conviction that drove every decision he made while directing and co-writing the film, and it shows up in the way he talked about the risks he knew he was taking by making it in the current climate around immigration in this country.

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Ep 325- Ben Affleck explica cómo Luis Gerardo Méndez y Adriana Paz escribieron sus propios diálogos para lograr conversaciones auténticas en pantalla. La película también explora las máscaras que adoptamos frente al poder. #BenAffleck #Cine #México #Entrevista

♬ original sound – Jorge Ramos

Affleck acknowledged that fear among immigrant communities has grown considerably, and that this reality made itself visible during the production of “Animals” in a way he did not anticipate when he started the project. The film was shot in Los Angeles, and there were days when the crew had to suspend filming because ICE operations were taking place in the areas where they were working. He described the experience of watching the situations in the script play out in real life around him as extraordinary, the fiction and the reality colliding on the same streets at the same time.

He Knew Making This Film Was a Risk and He Made It Anyway

Affleck was direct about the fact that making a film centered on the dignity and humanity of immigrant characters represents a risk in the current environment around immigration in the United States, and that he made the decision to take that risk deliberately because the topic demanded it. He told Ramos that his desire was to portray immigrants as people with dignity who are the protagonists of their own stories rather than supporting characters in someone else’s narrative, and that the relevance of the moment made it impossible to look away from the responsibility that came with having a platform to tell that story.

He also addressed a perception that exists in the film industry around English-language audiences and subtitle resistance, acknowledging that there is a widely held assumption that non-Spanish-speaking audiences prefer stories in English and may disengage from productions that require reading subtitles. He pushed back against that assumption by making the film anyway, arguing that the social relevance of the story and the importance of representing the immigrant experience with honesty and dignity outweighed any commercial calculation about subtitle preferences.

ICE Was Operating on His Filming Locations and the Script Was Playing Out in Real Life

The interview with Jorge Ramos took place against the backdrop of an ongoing national debate about U.S. immigration policy and the impact of ICE operations on communities across the country, a debate that Affleck’s film enters at a moment when the distance between fiction and reality has narrowed considerably. Affleck described the days when filming had to be paused because of ICE activity in Los Angeles as a moment that sharpened his understanding of what he was making and why it needed to exist, rather than treating it as an inconvenient production detail.

He described it as extraordinary to witness the situations written in the script happening in real life around him during production, a collision between fiction and reality that gave the film a depth that no amount of research or preparation could have produced on its own. The experience clearly informed how seriously he took the responsibility of getting the immigrant characters right, which is part of why he asked Mexican actors Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez to help write their own parts rather than simply delivering lines he had written for them.

He Said This Is a Country of Immigrants and His Family Proves It

Affleck’s personal connection to the subject of immigration is not incidental to the film but central to why he chose to make it at this particular moment. He told Ramos directly that his people and his family are immigrants, and that the story of the characters in “Animals” is also the story of the United States, a country whose identity has always been shaped by the people who came to it from somewhere else and built their lives within it. That personal framing sits alongside a professional one: he made a film that stars Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun and Ray Fisher alongside its Mexican leads, produced in association with Artists Equity, the studio he co-founded with Matt Damon, and he made it knowing that the conversation it would enter was already charged and already personal for millions of people watching it. “Animals” is streaming on Netflix now.