Jen Affleck is not dancing to the negative tunes about her husband, Zac Affleck. After The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star and her husband—who are parents to Nora, 4, Lucas, 2, and Penelope, 4 months—were under scrutiny during her stint on Dancing With the Stars, she reacted to the chatter. "It can be tiring and draining, just because it gets old hearing the same things," Jen admitted in an exclusive interview with E! News' Will Marfuggi and costar Jessi Ngatikaura. "For me, I'm like, 'People will always talk and people will always have their opinions,' and I think it is frustrating for him when people don't see what's happening behind closed doors and how much work and effort he's putting in."
Indeed, Zac expressed such frustration after his wife was eliminated from Dancing With the Stars last month with pro partner Jan Ravnik. When a fan shared a video speculating Zac was relieved by the development, the Mormon Wives star slammed them in the comments, writing, "You're honestly disgusting, grow up." As Jen noted of the situation, "We're working on tuning out the noise of the world—I think it's still hard for him."
Meanwhile, the 26-year-old is still getting used to being a public figure herself. "It's hard to constantly open your phone and see negative comments and it's hard not to take that in," she explained. "Even if you say you don't take it in, subconsciously we all care to a certain point. For me, I always have to remind myself, I post, I share my story, and then I take a step back. As long as I'm focusing on being the best version of myself, that's all that matters."
When it comes to Zac sharing during season three of their Hulu series, which hit the platform in full today, Nov. 13, that he believes the couple would be in a healthier spot without the show and MomTok (the mom side of TikTok), Jen admitted that her husband is "probably right." Nevertheless, she wouldn't trade where the couple is right now. "I feel like we've grown so much," she reasoned. "Clearly, if we hadn't been part of MomTok or been part of this show, we wouldn't have gone through everything that we went through this last year. Even though that was so hard and almost broke us, it actually strengthened us in the long run."
For Jen, putting their relationship out there has more pros than cons. "There's so much we can learn from each other and so much that the world can learn from us as a group," she added. "It's not going to be easy, it's going to cause issues, it's going to make us uncomfortable but it's through being uncomfortable that we grow. And so even though it's challenging and there's a lot of drama, there's a lot of good that comes from it too."
