Jennifer Garner on her divorce: I had to explain the meaning of ‘scandal’ to the kids

The nanny didn’t do it, Jennifer Garner says.

Didn’t spark the actress’s divorce from Ben Affleck, that is, despite gossip accounts to the contrary after the two announced their split last June -- accounts that Affleck’s camp denied from the get-go.

“We had been separated for months before I ever heard about the nanny,” Garner told Vanity Fair for its March issue. “She had nothing to do with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation. Bad judgment? Yes. It’s not great for your kids for [a nanny] to disappear from their lives.”

Her marriage to Affleck, which lasted nearly 10 years, was real, she said, and it was a priority for her to stay in it. It just didn’t work out.

“I didn’t marry the big fat movie star; I married him,” she explained. “And I would go back and remake that decision .... You can’t have these three babies and so much of what we had. He’s the love of my life. What am I going to do about that?”

Garner, whose new film “Miracles From Heaven” hits theaters March 16, said she’s kept herself intentionally unplugged for the most part since the divorce news went public. She wants to focus on the big picture, and on their children Violet, 10, Seraphina, 7, and Sam, 4.

“Ben says, ‘Oh, you just don’t care,’ and I say, ‘No, it’s the opposite.’ It hurts me so much, and I care so much,” she said. Even keeping it unplugged, she and her kids “have had to have conversations about the meaning of ‘scandal.’”

Even as she moves ahead, Garner said, she and Affleck are working to keep a united front, which can be complicated.

“He’s the most brilliant person in any room, the most charismatic, the most generous. He’s just a complicated guy. I always say, ‘When his sun shines on you, you feel it.’ But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it’s cold. He can cast quite a shadow.”

Follow Christie D’Zurilla on Twitter @theCDZ and Google+. Follow the Ministry of Gossip on Twitter @LATcelebs.

ALSO:

Allies of Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner spin the divorce backstory