Congratulations to Patricia Highsmith, who brought Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas together.
The internet is abuzz today with the news that Ben Affleck—perhaps the most famous Bostonian with an enormous phoenix tattooed on his back—and the star, most recently, of Knives Out Ana de Armas are, to quote Page Six quoting a bystander to their canoodling, “totally dating.”
If you’re wondering why this qualifies as literary news, I would direct you to the circumstances of their coupling: the two met on the set of Deep Water, the film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name.
According to Wikipedia, Deep Water is the first erotic film that Disney has released since 1994’s Color of Night, so you can only imagine the amount of pent-up sexual energy floating around that set.
We can only hope that the new couple feels appropriately to the true author of their burgeoning romance, Patricia Highsmith herself.
Jessie Gaynor
Jessie Gaynor is a senior editor at Lit Hub whose writing has appeared in McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, The Glow was published by Random House in 2023. You can buy it here.
