- - Ben Affleck and Matt Damon on Working Together in Hollywood: ‘The Dream Came After the Friendship’ - Exclusive

Alexandra HurtadoJanuary 15, 2026 at 7:02 PM

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Camaraderie and cops: one is second nature toBen Affleckand Matt Damon, the other is the Oscar winners' latest role in their new film, The Rip. Playing friends in the Netflix crime drama was a case of life imitating art for the real-life partners in crime, whose decades-spanning friendship has included several collaborations.

"We just have a ball together when we work," Damon tells Parade in an exclusive new interview. "And we've been doing it for 40 something years. I mean, we did high school theater together, so it's really nice to still be able to do it in our 50s and we went through a long stretch of not working together. I think we got known as a kind of a team, and kind of this need to kind of create singular careers and individuate a little bit."

"I think we avoided working together probably too much for kind of a couple decades, and found ourselves here, and we kind of went, you know, 'What are we doing?' Like, 'Let's try to find more things to do together,'" Damon adds. "Our favorite thing is to make movies. And there's no more fun you can have than making movies with people that you love and you really want to work with, and so that's what we're trying to do."

'The Rip' stars Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars and Ben Affleck as Det Sergeant J.D. ByrneWarrick Page/Netflix

While some might say never do business with friends, it has worked out well, very well, for both Damon and Affleck. Over the years, the actors have starred in multiple films together, including 1997's Good Will Hunting, which earned them an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and, in 2022, the pals co-founded the artist-led studio Artists Equity.

"I think our friendship kind of supersedes the business, like we were friends before we were employed as actors," Damon notes. "We started out doing extra work together in Boston, and we shared a bank account because we wanted to save money to go to New York to audition for things. So we've always kind of approached this as this dream that we've had. The dream came after the friendship."

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Working with a friend like Damon provides Affleck with a sense of comfort. The Argo director exclusively tells Parade, "Most people have friends that they've had for a long time. I don't think that's unusual. Maybe it's unusual because this line of work can become public, and it's maybe more unusual that people who grew up together, who have the sort of same goals like this. The truth of it is that acting is paradoxical because if you're anxious or nervous or self-conscious, it's not believable. So one of the exercises to try to get people to be relaxed and at ease, I try to format, as a director, a sort of sense of ease and comfort. It's such an advantage to be working with somebody who you feel that comfortable with."

Though he joked about doing a lot of favors for Damon and teaching him how to act, Affleck was serious in his praise of his buddy, calling him "such a great actor." "[He] never sounds like a line, and he's so at ease and comfortable, and he's just so skilled, frankly," Affleck remarks. "It's a pleasure."

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Affleck actually believes his friendship with Damon provided an advantage for their newest movie, The Rip. "When I started doing this, there wasn't as much awareness on the part of the public that went to see movies about the nuances and details of the real lives of the actors. And as that became more common with the emergence of like, more of the press around that and social media, et cetera, et cetera, and frankly, promoting the movies, honestly, it also contributes to that, it actually makes your job harder, right? Because you have more disbelief that you need to ask audiences to suspend. So [The Rip director] Joe [Carnahan], I think, wisely took advantage of what he believed was a sort of, if you know who Matt or I are, you're probably familiar also with the fact that we're friends, and that actually can be quite helpful. Like, take the baggage that people bring to it and use it," Affleck observes.

The Gone Girl star points out that he thinks all the great filmmakers who he admires do that. "And Joe does it in this case," Affleck says, explaining, "Because rather than having to spend time at the beginning of the movie with exposition, you know, sort of crudely demonstrating, 'Oh look, now we're showing you how close these friends are.' The audience then immediately knows, well, if that's what they're showing me, that has some bearing on this, so this friendship is going to be fractured and begins to allow you to predict future events in the movie, which is kind of fatal to compelling drama."

'The Rip' premieres January 16 on Netflix.Claire Folger/Netflix

"Instead, [Joe] just goes, 'Well, I'm going to trust them.' Throw these guys in there, and instead, convince the audience that they're police, assume that they will project that friendship onto them, or believe the friendship that's alluded to, and just allow it to be more resonant when there's a conflict, when there's a question of like, maybe they aren't that good friends, maybe one can't trust the other as well as they thought. And I think he uses that tool to great effect," Affleck continues. "I'm very proud of the movie. I think it's a terrific watch. I think it really delivers on what it promises."

In The Rip, Affleck and Damon, both Massachusetts natives, play Miami cops who discover millions in cash at a stash house, where they must count the seizure, which makes them a target and unsure of who they can trust. The film, directed by Joe Carnahan and also starring Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Kyle Chandler, Lina Esco, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Alex Hernandez and Cliff Chamberlain, was inspired by a true story.

As for whether there are any real stories that he and Affleck have had on the back burner, waiting for the right moment to bring to screens, Damon admits there isn't. "We're always just kind of open to anything that we think is good and will make a good movie," Damon shares. "We started Artist Equity, and the whole idea behind it is that we'll be able to make good movies and help our friends make good movies and keep the lights on and stay in business."

The Rip premieres Jan. 16 on Netflix.

Related: Matt Damon Makes Rare Red Carpet Appearance With His Stunning Family: 'His Daughters Look Like Dolls'

This story was originally published by Parade on Jan 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the Movies section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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