Ben Affleck: My ‘Celebrity Wordle Group’ Chat Is ‘Fiercely Competitive’

Forget FaceTime and Zoom — the celebrity group chat is where it’s at. Whether it’s Taylor Swift’s squad or the cast of the Avengers, these are the famous text chains every fan wishes they could be a part of.

Luckily, Hollywood’s biggest stars often give fans a bit of insight at what it’s like inside these never-ending conversations with their close pals and costars. Riverdale star Madelaine Petsch described her cast’s group chat as “lit,” while the Dawson’s Creek WhatsApp is more exclusive than you might imagine — just ask Busy Philipps.

The Cougar Town alum exclusively told Us Weekly she was surprised to hear that her former costars — Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson and James Van Der Beek — were constantly keeping in touch without her. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow. OK, well, that’s cool,’” Philipps said in 2018, before joking, “I have everyone’s number individually. Should I just text them all together, like, ‘Hey, guys. Want to include me in?’”

Not every famous person agrees that more text threads are a good thing. One reason Philipps wasn’t that upset about being left off the Dawson’s Creek phone tree is because she has “enough group texts that drive me insane.”

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The Freaks and Geeks alum told Us, “I truly cannot stand a group text. Because when people get going, and if you’re in a meeting or you’re doing something and then you get to your phone and you have like 40 missed texts, and you have to weed through.”

Fans might be willing to overlook the large number of notifications if they can get in on the Dune, Bridgerton or the Big Little Lies cast’s star-studded text chains. In 2019, Nicole Kidman revealed that the HBO show’s message group was no boys allowed — and very light on emojis.

Some TV show casts even have multiple conversations going at the same time such as One Tree Hill, which has a chat just for the dads. As sweet as that may sound, Sophia Bush swears that the girl’s online hangout is where you want to be — it includes every former female cast member from the show, including Hilarie Burton and Bethany Joy Lenz.

Candace Cameron-Bure revealed to Us that there are two different threads for Full House and Fuller House — but only a handful of cast members have access to both. No surprise, she’s one of the lucky ones.

Keep scrolling to learn about all the celebrity group chats you’ll wish you could join:

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“We have a group text we can’t tell anyone about!” Kelly Clarkson recalled of The Voice coaches’ messaging chain during a February 2023 episode of her The Kelly Clarkson Show, while speaking with fellow show mentor Niall Horan.

“We’re really, honestly, a big giant family,” Ashley Greene, who played Alice Cullen, told E! News in February 2023 about staying in touch with her costars through a text chain. “It’s really beautiful to see all these years later — and all these life stages later — that we’re so supportive of one another.”

While talking to Us on the Golden Globes red carpet in January 2023, Greg Tarzan Davis revealed that he and his fellow recruits keep in touch via text.

“Of course, we have a Top Gun group chat! I can’t tell you what’s going on in there, but it’s a lot of like, ‘Oh Gosh, I can’t wait to see you tomorrow,’ ‘Can’t wait to do this. Can’t ready to do that.’ But we all see each other outside anyways. It’s just, like, to be forced to have to come together [for awards shows], it makes it even better,” the Louisiana native shared.

Davis added that Tom Cruise doesn’t hold back with his emoji usage.

“I texted him ‘good night’ last night and he sent me a little kissy face,” the Call of the Wild actor said. “And I was like, ‘Aw, thank you, Tom.’”

In September 2022, Anna Kendrick revealed that the Pitch Perfect group chat is still going strong more than a decade after the first film hit theaters. “We are texting each other going like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you guys, it’s almost been 10 years and remember this night?'” the Twilight star told E! News. “And, like, sending pictures from filming the first riff-off in that empty pool and we’re freezing cold. So, it’s very — it’s almost, like, disgustingly adorable.”

William Jackson Harper revealed in August 2022 that he still keeps in touch with his former NBC costars via text. “We’re in a group chat and we blow it up every now and again,” Harper said during an appearance on E! News’ Daily Pop. “Just random stuff and some memes and some jokes and whatever, but I still keep in touch with everybody.”

“I talk to Danny [Franzese], I talk to Lindsay [Lohan], I talk to Amanda [Seyfried] every once in a while,” Jonathan Bennett, who played the role of Aaron Samuels in the iconic teen comedy, told E! News in August 2022 about keeping in touching with the rest of the cast. “We have a Mean Girls group chat that lights up every October 3.”

He continued: “It’s like a family. We all got to be involved in this really special movie that meant a lot to a lot of people and you don’t always get in your career.”

“We were just texting the other day. We have a little group chat, me, Taylor [Swift] and Sadie [Sink],” Dylan O’Brien told Entertainment Tonight in July 2022 about the trio keeping in touch after working on the All Too Well: The Short Film together.

In July, Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri opened up to Vanity Fair about the cast having a group chat where they discuss the Hulu series.

In 2018, Kendall Jenner revealed that her family didn’t have just one text thread, but multiple ones — which made her nervous.

“I was on a group chat with Khloé [Kardashian] and Kourtney [Kardashian] the other day and we were talking about something — I don’t even think we were talking bad about one of our other family members — but I had this realization,” the model said during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, do you have a group chat about me?! Do you talk about me in other group chats?’ They were like, ‘Kendall, you literally don’t do anything wrong. We don’t talk about you.’”

The “Cardigan” singer’s besties, including Gigi Hadid, Karlie Kloss and Selena Gomez, stay in touch through WhatsApp, according to Hailee Steinfeld.

“We try to [speak a lot],” the Hawkeye actress said in 2016. “It’s so crazy being all over the world at the same time and rarely being in the same place at the same time. But it’s so much fun to stay in contact and find each other along the way and all get caught up.”

Meredith Monroe, who played Andie McPhee on the WB series, doesn’t have to wait until the next reunion to catch up with her costars. “James, Josh, Katie, we’re all in a group text,” she told Entertainment Tonight in 2018. “We reconnected [after the 20th anniversary] and now we have a group text going again, so that’s been nice.”

However, this was news to Philipps, who told Us that she and Michelle Williams weren’t asked to join the ongoing conversation. “I don’t know why we’re not on it, but we’re not,” she said that same year. “Maybe they figure that we’re fine.”

The MCU heroes like to stay connected via text — but Chris Hemsworth is often hard to reach.

The Thor: Ragnarok star told BBC Radio 1 that he has two numbers: an Australian one and an American one. The problem is the group chat goes to his U.S. number and he spends most of his time Down Under. “So when I fly into America, I’m like, ‘Cool, 40 days of messages to catch up with,’” he explained in 2019.

While the Extraction actor is the slowest to respond, he noted that Robert Downey Jr. is “pretty active” in the chat and Jeremy Renner shares the most NSFW messages. “The guy’s a sicko,” Hemsworth joked.

It’s girls vs. boys when it comes to the beloved CW show’s online correspondence — and Bush said that the women of the teen drama, which ran from 2003 to 2012, are winning the chat wars.

“Our group texts are lit. If people could see them, I’m like, ‘Oh man, this would be something,’” the Chicago P.D. alum told Bustle in 2018. “We literally have a group text with every girl who’s ever been on the show and it’s off the chain.”

Not to be outdone, the men of the teen series have their own “One Tree Hill dad chat,” which Tyler Hilton joined after having his first child with wife Megan Park in February 2020.

“It was the cutest thing,” the singer gushed in an interview with Today that fall. “I was thinking, ‘Dude, if any of us thought we’d one day be on a Father’s Day chat together, we would’ve been like: What?’ It was wild.”

Lady Whistledown might want to look over those receipts. Unfortunately, Regé-Jean Page will no longer be able to spill the tea with his former costars on WhatsApp.

In September 2021, the former Duke of Hastings admitted he “respectfully exited” the chat after leaving the Netflix series. “I didn’t want to put them in an awkward situation where they had to kick me out,” the English actor told GQ at the time, adding that the show’s “universe has expanded” enough that his presence in the text group won’t be missed too much.

Yes, both the original series and its Netflix revival have their own group chats — though Cameron Bure told Us that there is some crossover.

“The Full House group chat is, like, it’s the OGs: John [Stamos], Bob [Saget], Dave [Coulier]. … The only one that’s on both is Scott Weinger — oh, and Jodie [Sweetin] and Andrea [Barber], of course,” she explained in April 2021.

The Fuller House thread “includes, like, all the kids, even their parents and then Juan Pablo [Di Pace] and John Brotherton,” the actress best known as DJ Tanner continued. “It’s fun, but the OG stays in the OG!”

Kidman told Vanity Fair in 2019 that the cast of the HBO series — which includes Reese Witherspoon, Zoë Kravitz and Shailene Woodley — had a group chat that was women only. “There are no men in our equation,” she said. “I mean, there are, but they’re not on the group chat, let’s put it that way.”

When Meryl Streep joined the show in season 2, she got an invite to the thread, “and she’s very funny,” the Undoing alum revealed in the same interview. The Practical Magic star would later admit that she was “the only one who sends emojis,” while Witherspoon prefers to send gifs.

Timothée Chalamet gave fans a taste of the sci-fi film’s group chat when he shared a screengrab via his Instagram Story in 2021 of his costar Oscar Isaac joking that they looked like a “REALLY sh—y boy band” in a recent photo shoot.

Fellow Dune star Josh Brolin’s reaction? “We ARE a sh—y boy band.”

Not even a pandemic could hinder the online chemistry of the CW teen drama’s cast. “[Our] group chat is always lit up,” Petsch told Us in July 2020. “It’s never not lit.”

Camila Mendes agreed with her costar. “Our group text is active,” she told Us in April 2021. “There’s a lot of TikToks being sent back and forth. We’re always texting each other when personal things happen. We very much lean on each other.”

If your Spidey sense is tingling it might be because Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire have a WhatsApp group. The Impossible star told BBC Radio One in December 2021 that he and the former Spider-Man stars have a bond thanks to Peter Parker.

“We share something that only us three could possibly imagine,” he said. “Maybe a few stunt doubles, [but] it’s different actually being the guy.”

Holland admitted that he was the one who got the chat set up initially — and it might not be the most active of the Hollywood threads. “I think I’m the only one who’s ever spoken in it,” he joked.

David Arquette, who reprised his role as Dewey in the new Scream film, revealed to Us that a group chat exists between the newcomers.

“The younger guys on the new film had the whole text chain text chain going, but I bow[ed] out at some point just because I just felt like the old guy,” he shared in January 2022.

The fifth installment in the slasher series added Melissa Barrera, Mason Gooding, Jenna Ortega, Dylan Minnette and Jack Quaid to the cast.

In February 2022, Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson-in-law Mike Tindall revealed that the royal family communicate via a WhatsApp group chat. Although he didn’t list which members were included in the text chain, he noted that he had reached out to Duchess Kate after she participated in a rugby training session at Twickenham Stadium.

Ben Savage, who played Cory Matthews on Boy Meets World from 1993 to 2000 and reprised the role for Girl Meets World from 2014 to 2017, still keeps in touch with Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and more cast members from the series.

“There’s a group chat and, of course, you know, I’m always very happy for them. I’m always wishing them the best,” Savage exclusively told Us in February 2022. “It’s interesting when you start off as kids with people, cause it’s like you’re just kind of connected throughout your lives. So, you can go one year, six months, two years, five years — and it’s like you’re always kind of connected to these people that you grew up working with. So it is a very unique and special bond.”

Adam Scott, who played Ben Wyatt, revealed that the cast of Parks and Rec has continued to stay in touch after the show ended in 2015.

“We all have a text chain that we’re always adding to. It’s the same text chain we’ve had since the show was shooting,” he exclusively told Us in May 2022. “We’re all still friends and it is just the best group of people. It really is. And I miss them tremendously.”

In July 2022, Natalia Dyer opened up about how her group chat with Joe Keery, Maya Hawke and Charlie Heaton discusses all things Nancy and Robin.

“We actually have a text thread that talks [about that] a bit. We send each other memes of things regarding that ship, which is funny,” she told Netflix at the time. “I think we all thought, ‘Oh, people would enjoy this duo.’ The internet is a very funny place, so there’s a lot of very interesting takes on things going on.”

“Well, I try not to talk too much because I have an Android and they yell at me. But today I was allowed to speak in the group chat,” Janelle James told Variety in July 2022, shortly after she and costars Quinta Brunson, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Tyler James Williams were nominated for Emmys.

The Gone Girl star revealed in a March 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter that he has a “celebrity Wordle group” chat with Matt Damon, Jason Bateman and Bradley Cooper.

Affleck shared that the crew is pretty serious about their word games. 

“You have to do the Wordle, the Quordle and the Octordle, and add up your score, and then whoever gets the lowest score wins for the day. It’s fiercely competitive, and there’s a lot of mockery and derision,” he said. “So, I’m in training.”