Eternals: Salma Hayek Had Significant Input On Ajak

Marvel’s Eternals is set to introduce 10 entirely new superheroes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While all 10 have appeared in Marvel Comics at one point or another, the actors playing them in live-action got a chance to put their own spin on them. According to Salma Hayek, Chloe Zhao and the executives behind the Marvel Studios feature guided the actors in a certain direction, but ultimately left the characters up to the respective actors to help flesh out and define.

“They start talking and it’s such a big world and it gets scarier as it goes on. And she gave me some kind of idea of what I would be doing in the film, but not much. You don’t know if that’s done in three scenes, in four, or in one,” Hayek said during a press visit to the set last January. “Then I started saying, okay, so I said a couple of things coming out of my ignorance, an absolute sense of loss. I was lost in it, but that helped me go more quickly into the more human part of the characters, because it was a complicated for me.”

Hayek then went directly to Marvel producer Nate Moore to begin asking questions to help flesh out her character. As the actor points out, she felt Ajak was better suited as a mother-like figure for the eponymous group of heroes.

“Could we not do it like the characters where the leader is like this? It’s more like the mother is, a lot of the times, the leader of a family and when identified, she loved it. And there were a couple of things I got to be maybe ambitious and say, well, could I be the superhero for the environment,” Hayek said.

She added, “Because it’s mother earth, and you have all these superheroes. They’re always trying to save the earth in all the superheroes movies. Marvel, all of that, but then nobody was like, “Let’s talk more about the earth we’re saving. Can I love animals and plants and all the things about humanity, like music and food? And can I be the superhero that really wants to save all those things?”

Eternals is currently set for release on November 5th.

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