“I really thought I had a chance... I feel like I let everybody down.”
It’s there in her music, like the 2014 single “Same Girl,” the radio sensation “I’m Real” with Ja Rule and her signature bop “Jenny From the Block.” In the latter, a girl from the Bronx makes the solemn promise: “No matter where I go, I know where I came from.” It’s also been doled out in her film roles, many of them rags-to-riches fairytales that emphasize both her street smarts and supreme glamour, like “Maid in Manhattan,” “Second Act” and, most recently, “Marry Me.
“Jennifer Lopez dominates in a quintessentially American story,” Goldsmith-Thomas oozes through a speakerphone, capping it off with, “Jennifer Lopez is Oscar worthy.” The star’s face crumbles into childish excitement, then quickly dissolves into paranoid superstition. “There’s a whole circuit around awards season that I had never done before. it truly becomes a campaign. if you don’t do it, they make you feel like you don’t have a chance,” Lopez tells her documentarian, with genuine distress in her voice.