Jennifer Lopez is finding empty-nest territory harder than she expected. The 56-year-old singer and actress told host Jimmy Kimmel during a May 27, 2026, appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that she has spent the past two months in tears as her 18-year-old twins, Max and Emme Muniz, prepare to leave home for college.
The conversation, which aired the night before one of the twins walked across a high school graduation stage, found Lopez oscillating between laughter and visible emotion as she tried to articulate what the milestone has meant to her. The twins, whom Lopez shares with ex-husband Marc Anthony, attend different high schools and will head to different colleges in the fall.
A Graduation Eve Confession
“Tomorrow one of them graduates [high school],” Lopez told Kimmel, before stopping herself short. “Don’t talk about it cause we start crying. I’ve been crying for two months.”
When Kimmel teased whether she would scan the audience at the ceremony for dry-eyed parents and silently judge them, Lopez laughed off the premise, predicting every parent in the room would break down at some point. The exchange, lighthearted on its surface, captured something many parents recognize: the disorienting collision of pride and grief that arrives when children begin pulling away.
Lopez, the voice behind “If You Had My Love” and star of the 2025 film “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” has been remarkably candid about the toll of the past several weeks. According to her appearance on the show, the unraveling began in earnest two months ago, when she sat down to write yearbook messages for her twins.
Two Days, Two Yearbook Messages
The yearbook task, Lopez said, undid her. It took her two full days to finish writing — one message for Max, another for Emme. When Kimmel asked whether she had simply duplicated the note since the children are twins, Lopez was emphatic. “No, Jimmy, no. They’re two different people,” she said.
That insistence on individuality has shaped much of how Lopez has approached the twins’ high school years. They attend separate schools. They have charted separate academic paths. And while the logistics of shuttling between two campuses might wear on most parents, Lopez has waved it off, telling Kimmel she wants her children to go where they want to go and do what they want to do.
Now, that philosophy is about to be tested at a greater distance. The twins will be enrolling at two different colleges, in two different cities, requiring two separate move-in trips at the end of the summer.
Target Runs and Dorm Sheets
Kimmel pressed Lopez on whether the realities of her fame would allow her to do the ordinary parental tasks ahead — the Target runs, the unpacking, the assembly of cheap furniture in cramped dorm rooms. Lopez insisted she will be there for all of it, telling Kimmel they already have sheets at home and plan to pack up the twins’ bedrooms together.
She also confessed, with the dark humor of a parent bracing for separation, that she is quietly hoping the dorm rooms feel too small and that her children grow homesick fast. The plan, she joked, is for them to miss home and return as soon as possible.
Beneath the jokes, though, was something steadier. Lopez told Kimmel she remembers being 18 herself and aching to get out into the world. She recalled the year-long drumbeat of friends and acquaintances asking whether her children leaving for college would be terrible. Her answer, she said, has always been the same: it is going to be great. The twins have dreams. They have things they want to do. The mother’s job is to let them.
From Toddlers to Young Adults
Max and Emme were born in February 2008 to Lopez and Marc Anthony, who divorced in 2014 but have remained co-parents. The twins have grown up largely out of the spotlight, though they have made occasional public appearances alongside their mother — most recently at the Oct. 6, 2025, New York screening of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” at The Shed.
Emme has dabbled in performance, joining Lopez onstage at high-profile events over the years, while Max has tended to stay further from the cameras. Their mother has spoken often about trying to give them a version of normalcy that her own career has, at times, made difficult.
Lopez was photographed in Los Angeles on May 27, the same day the Kimmel episode was released. By May 28, one of the twins had graduated high school, and the countdown to dorm-room move-in had officially begun.
For all of Lopez’s public successes — the residencies, the films, the records — her conversation with Kimmel landed as something simpler: a mother trying to talk about her children leaving home without falling apart on national television. She mostly held it together. The two months of crying, she made clear, were doing the heavy lifting for her.