Matt Damon reveals how The Beatles documentary changed his relationship with Ben Affleck
Matt Damon has revealed how a documentary on The Beatles made him want to work relentlessly again with his longtime collaborator Ben Affleck.
The Good Will Hunting duo reunited in 2021 on the movie, The Last Duel, and have since continued to work together, first on Air in 2023, and now, on the upcoming film, The Rip, which is set to arrive on Netflix in January 2026.
The pair have been friends since they were children, bursting onto the Hollywood scene simultaneously with Good Will Hunting, which they wrote and starred in. Now, Damon has revealed that watching the Peter Jackson documentary, Get Back, on The Beatles was key to them working together regularly again.
At the end of the series, the final title card states how the Fab Four never worked together again, which touched a nerve with Damon and made him want to continue collaborating with Affleck for as long as possible.
Damon told GQ that he said to Affleck, “Who cares if we oversaturate the marketplace with movies we’re both in? We’re crazy if we don’t take advantage of the fact that we are both still here and able to do this.”
In the same interview, Affleck heaped praise on his close collaborator, sharing, “Every time I act with Matt is a humbling experience because I learn to appreciate further just how good an actor he is.” He also said of Damon’s acting chops, “When you know someone as long as I’ve known Matt, you develop a pretty good sense of what is real and what isn’t and it’s almost impossible to catch Matt acting. He is really a master of realism and it’s something I deeply admire about him. One of many things.”
The childhood friends launched their production company Artists Equity in 2022, which has overseen projects such as The Accountant 2, Small Things Like These and Air.
Damon said of the business venture: “The great thing about the company is even with the films that we’re not in or participating in directly, we’re reading them [together], we’re giving feedback to the artists who are making them, and we’re connected in that way around movies.”
Looking ahead to the future, Damon added, “We want to work together as much as we can, but we end up working on all of these things in some capacity or other and having these conversations and it’s just really fun.”
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