Actors Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek collaborated once again for the hit animated feature Puss in Boots. But Banderas quipped that promoting the hit film risked causing a rift between the two longtime friends.
Salma Hayek once joked that she piggybacked off of Antonio Banderas’ career
Hayek and Banderas have known each other for over two decades. In a way, Banderas was there to see the beginning of the superstar career that Hayek enjoys today. Speaking to Today, Hayek revealed Banderas was very supportive during their collaboration on her breakout hit Desperado.
“My very first screentest was with Antonio,” she said.
Hayek’s career only flourished afterwards. Since then, the pair went on to film several projects together. Hayek quipped that she’s fortunate Banderas’ career has been as successful as it’s been for her own sake.
“I just feel very lucky that I have been able to piggyback ride on Antonio’s superstar career. Thank god, he’s doing so well because every time he gets a movie, I get to sneak in it, even if it’s a cameo. I think that’s how things happen. I’m sure somebody else is going to sneak in because of it. It’s a good chain,” Hayek once told Collider.
Hayek and Banderas also collaborated for the Puss in Boots movies. The animated features starred Banderas as the titular character, which originally appeared in Shrek 2 as a talking cat. Having just been a supporting character in the second Shrek film, Banderas admitted that the character’s longevity came as a surprise.
“In the beginning, it was a recurring character. I didn’t know that he was going to have a long career, of 10 years now,” Banderas said.
Hayek would join Banderas in the Shrek spin-off as the character Kitty Softpaws. And as much as the two may have enjoyed each other while filming, promoting the movie was a different matter. Due to a combination of exhaustion and fielding the same questions, Banderas admitted the press run took its toll.
“We traveled to nine countries, nine premieres, three different continents… It was fun and difficult too. It’s just weird when you’re doing interviews,” he once said according to FemaleFirst. “Basically, they ask you the same question again and again… and you answer the same thing… and when you’re doing pair interviews – because Salma and I we were just doing interviews all the time together – it’s just weird.”
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He joked that this eventually led to himself and Hayek briefly turning against each other.
“By the time that we were in Rome, we started kind of hating each other,” he said. “By the time we were in Sydney, we wanted to kill each other – because we knew exactly what the other [person] was going to answer. We were just so tired.”
But the frustration only lasted during the press run, and afterwards Banderas joked that he and Hayek went back to loving each other.
Salma Hayek was left sobbing before her ‘Desperado’ love scenes with Antonio Banderas
Hayek didn’t have the most comfortable time with Banderas during one of their first projects together. When she received the script for Desperado, there weren’t any love scenes involving her character. But much to Hayek’s dismay, a love scene would later be written in because of Hayek and Banderas’ impressive performances.
“It was demanded by the studio when they saw the chemistry,” she said in a 2022 interview on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. “I had a really, really hard time with that.”
She begrudgingly agreed to do the scene, but when the time came she couldn’t hold in her true feelings towards it. Banderas’ reaction to the intimate take only heightened Hayek’s concerns.
“When we were going to start shooting, I started to sob,” Hayek said. “One of the things I was afraid of was Antonio, because he was an absolute gentleman and super nice and we’re still very close friends but he was very free. So it scared me that for him it was like nothing.”
Hayek was able to do the scene due to the support of Banderas, the director, and others. But to this day, she found that particular moment in the movie a tough watch because of the memory.
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