Ben Affleck responds after “insensitive” comments seemed to blame ex-wife Jennifer Garner for his drinking

After an interview on Sirius/XM’s The Howard Stern Show made headlines for all the wrong reasons, Ben Affleck tried to set the record straight on Wednesday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!

During the chat with Stern, Affleck talked at length about his career, his failed marriage to Jennifer Garner, and his battle with alcoholism, during which he said he “probably still would have been drinking” were he still with Garner. The pair were married from 2005 to 2018.

“Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped,” the 49-year-old actor told Stern. “I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ And what I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”

The comments led fans to drag Affleck online, with some using the hashtag #TeamGarner.

On Jimmy Kimmel Live! Wednesday night, Affleck responded, saying of Garner, “I had gone on and said how much we respect each other and cared about each other and cared about our kids and put them first,” but the headline “just made me out to be the worst, most insensitive, stupid awful guy.”

The Tender Bar star also commented, “I would never want my kids to think I would ever say a bad word about their mom.” Affleck shares daughters Violet, 16, and Seraphina, 12, and 9-year-old son Samuel with the former Alias star.

Affleck insisted that the headline-grabbing drinking comment was taken out of context, and is, “the exact opposite of who I am.”

He insisted, “It hurts my feelings, man!”