Lisa Barlow is going the distance over a recent celebrity encounter.
After the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star told her castmates she skipped a cast trip in order to attend a work event alongside Ben Affleck, the Oscar winner admitted his memory of the alleged encounter was a bit fuzzy.
“I don’t want to get anybody in trouble,” he told Access Hollywood in an interview published Jan. 16. “I don’t know what this is—an event in Salt Lake City?”
In fact, Ben, 53, couldn’t pinpoint the last time he visited the area.
“I haven’t been in Utah in, I don’t know, eight, nine, 10 years?” he admitted in response to seeing a photo of the reality star. “It doesn’t look familiar to me and I don’t remember anything, and I don’t want to embarrass her.”
But the Gone Girl actor insisted he wasn’t contradicting Lisa’s story, pointing out that he’s had many similar experiences.
“I meet a lot of people, I say hi to a lot of people,” he explained. “I don’t want to be the jerk who’s like, ‘I did meet you.’ You don’t remember everyone you meet.”
But Lisa, 51, offered a much clearer recollection, revealing exactly when and where the interaction she was referring to took place.
“SXSW [for] The Accountant 2,” she wrote in a comment on Instagram, referring to the Austin, Tex., where Ben’s action thriller premiered in March, “and it was a great movie and party.”
Lisa previously cited her attendance at the festival—which she didn’t reference by name—as a contributing factor for her absence from an RV road trip with her RHOSLC cohorts, opting to sit out the excursion to prioritize her professional commitments.
“I think what people forget is I have a very full life because I keep it kinda private,” she told costar Angie Katsanevas during the Bravo series’ season six premiere in September. “And I’m not gonna drop names, but I’ll be with Ben and Blake [Lively].”
Ben Affleck politely denied ever meeting “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star Lisa Barlow despite her previous claim that a work obligation with him was keeping her from filming some of the Bravo show this season.
The “Gone Girl” star was put on the spot in his Access Hollywood interview, which was posted on Friday.
“It’s ‘Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.’ Cast member Lisa Barlow is saying that she was with you at an event with her husband and she wasn’t able to film. The cast members don’t believe her. So the question is, do you know who Lisa Barlow is?” the interviewer asked the actor as he promoted his new film with Matt Damon, “The Rip.”