Salma Hayek Initially Passed On ‘Eternals’ Because She Assumed Marvel Wanted Her To Play A ‘Grandmother’

In case it wasn’t clear that Marvel is back in full force, the studio has fired up the marketing machine for Eternals, which will be the next major Phase 4 blockbuster to follow September’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. On Wednesday, Entertainment Weekly laid out a massive deep dive into the new group of superheroes that director Chloé Zhao will introduce to the MCU for the first time.

One of those immortal heroes is Salma Hayak‘s Ajak, and according to the actor, she actually wasn’t champing at the bit to take Marvel’s call because she just assumed they wanted her to play the “grandmother” or some sort of elderly character that guides the actual heroes. To her surprise, that wasn’t the case, and she’s right there in the action. Via EW:

Hayek, for example, plays the group’s leader Ajak, but when she initially heard Marvel wanted to meet with her, she assumed it would be for a small supporting role, not a starring hero.

“I said, ‘Forget it,'” she recalls, laughing. “I said, ‘God knows what kind of grandmother they want me to play.’ I’m used to being [told] I’m going to be the extra or the old prostitute. And then they said the director was Chloé Zhao, and I said, ‘Okay! Let’s have the meeting!'”

Following EW‘s guide to the Eternals, Marvel surprised fans by dropping a brand new trailer on Thursday that offered the best look yet at the new heroes and explained what the heck they were doing while Thanos was ripping apart the universe.

Marvel’s Eternals hits theaters on November 5.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

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