Ana Navarro confessed on The View that she tried to set up Ben Affleck with Shakira after his split from Jennifer Lopez, and even Matt Damon called the idea complicated.

The conservative co-host told viewers she spotted Matt Damon and his family at a Shakira concert right after news broke of Affleck’s second high-profile split with Jennifer Lopez. Navarro, who has never met Affleck, floated the matchmaking idea to Damon on the spot.

The Daily Beast reported Navarro’s on-air account of the failed setup, which quickly drew pushback from her fellow panelists and turned into another round of celebrity relationship chatter on the daytime show.

Navarro laid out the timing plainly. Affleck and Lopez had just split. Shakira had broken up with her husband. Damon and Affleck are longtime friends and collaborators. To Navarro, the pieces lined up.

“Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are friends, and it had just come out that J.Lo and Ben Affleck were breaking up,” Navarro said. “So, Shakira had broken up with her husband.”

Matt Damon saw trouble coming

Damon did not bite. Navarro relayed his reaction without sugarcoating it.

“Matt Damon said that could be complicated,” she told the panel. She still pressed the case on air, adding, “Enough time has passed where I think Ben Affleck needs to give Shakira a call, and Shakira needs to give Ben Affleck a call.”

Fellow Republican co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin cut in fast. She noted Shakira’s reported friendship with Lopez and made clear she wanted “better for Shakira” than Affleck, whom she described as someone who “seems a little messy.”

Griffin’s jab fit a familiar pattern on a show that rarely misses a chance to dissect high-profile splits, even as ABC slashes wardrobe budgets and pay at the same daytime franchise.

Whoopi Goldberg shuts down the speculation

Moderator Whoopi Goldberg stepped in to cool the gossip. She reminded the table that outsiders only see fragments of anyone’s private life.

“None of us know because we only know what’s happening in our backyards,” Goldberg said. “So we don’t know what happens in relationships. When you read stuff in the newspaper, or you read stuff online -”

Griffin finished the thought with a joke: “It’s always true. Unless it’s about us.”

The exchange captured the show’s usual mix of matchmaking bravado and sudden caution whenever the talk turns personal. Viewers have watched similar on-air confessions before, including moments when Sunny Hostin boasted about a past jury holdout that still draws scrutiny.

A well-worn Hollywood timeline

Affleck, 54, and Lopez, 57, first got engaged in 2002 and split in 2004 without marrying. They rekindled in 2021, married in 2022, and saw Lopez file for divorce in 2024. The divorce finalized the following year.

In between, Affleck married and divorced Jennifer Garner, with whom he has three children. Lopez’s own record includes marriages to Ojani Noa and Cris Judd, a marriage and divorce from Marc Anthony, and a broken engagement with Alex Rodriguez after dating from 2017 to 2021.

Shakira, 49, co-headlined the Super Bowl LIV halftime show with Lopez in 2020. That shared stage only added fuel to Navarro’s later matchmaking pitch once both stars were single again.

Navarro is 54. Damon is 55. Griffin is 37. None of those ages changed the basic problem Damon flagged at the concert: the idea looked messy from the start, and the panel’s own reactions proved his point.

The View has spent years mixing celebrity gossip with political combat, a formula that has also brought network headaches, from cost cutting to the period when ABC admitted FCC pressure altered its guest bookings.

Disney later faced its own questions on the same front after pulling political guests under scrutiny, yet the co-hosts still find time for failed setups and relationship score-settling.

Navarro never claimed the call ever happened. She never claimed Affleck or Shakira responded. She simply told national television she floated the idea to Matt Damon, heard it was complicated, and still thinks both stars should pick up the phone.

Daytime television will keep chasing Hollywood’s leftovers. Taxpayers and viewers get the bill for the spectacle either way.