JENNY FROM THE CROCK: Jennifer Lopez was filmed in Los Angeles, and then used Hollywood magic to look as if she was visiting The Bronx in a tiny Fiat 500 for this ad. She actually left the arduous New York driving to a body double. (
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Forget “Jenny from the Block.” She wasn’t even in the same time zone!
A new Fiat commercial featuring Jennifer Lopez tooling around The Bronx in a subcompact car and talking about how the neighborhood “inspired” her uses a body double for scenes filmed in New York City — because the real diva never left the West Coast.
“Her portion was filmed in Los Angeles,” J.Lo’s spokesman, Mark Young, confirmed to The Post yesterday. “I don’t see a problem. There are many cases where films are done the same way.”
Fiat spokeswoman Diana Gutierrez added, “We took the opportunity to film wherever Ms. Lopez was working at the time to accommodate her schedule . . . One does not need to be in a specific location to be inspired or continue to be inspired.”
The Smoking Gun Web site first reported that the role of “Jenny from the Block” was actually played by a body double.
So while the Lopez lookalike was behind the wheel for scenes filmed in The Bronx last summer, the real J.Lo stayed in Los Angeles.
She was filmed inside the tiny Fiat 500 pretending to drink in the sights of her old ’hood.
In the ad, Lopez tells prospective Fiat purchasers, “This is my world. This place inspires me.”
She then adds, “They may be just streets to you, but to me, they’re a playground.”
It was actually neither.
Later in production, the shots of the actress were cleverly merged to make it appear as if she was driving around the neighborhood.
The commercial purportedly “explores her personal take on how life in the New York City borough continues to inspire her to be tougher, to stay sharper and to think faster,” Fiat boss Olivier Francois said.
“We watch as she leaves Manhattan and makes her way back to The Bronx, where she grew up and [which she] continues to be inspired by,” he added.
The flap may not help Fiat overcome US consumers’ long-lingering disdain for the Italian automaker, which began managing Chrysler in 2009 when the Detroit car manufacturer nearly went belly-up.
Its new Fiat 500 is the first model to be sold in the United States in decades.
In the 1970s, the company’s reputation for spotty reliability and poor quality led to terrible jokes about Fiat being an acronym for “Fix it again, Tony.”