Eternals Star Salma Hayek Shares Surprising New Details About MCU Character

We're still over a month away from the premiere of Marvel's Eternals but we're finally learning new things about the new characters who will be introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film. For instance, Salma Hayek has just revealed some new details about her character Ajak.

Ajak is one of the most interesting characters in Eternals considering that the character is male in the comic books. However, the decision to gender-swap the hero was made with several considerations.

Hayek recently spoke to TotalFilm where she revealed that she and Chloe Zhao discussed how Ajak would be portrayed in Eternals.

"Chloé decided to tackle the concept of leadership from the perspective of motherhood... I'm not a mother. I'm an alien. I can't have kids," Hayek said. "However, my character used to be a man in the comics, now it's a woman. So instead of just changing the gender, I proposed to [Zhao] to really bring something that is very specific to womanhood."

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She then pointed out how Ajak takes to her leadership role.

"I need to guide them into things... we have a mission in life, in the world. A mother also needs to guide her kids," Hayek said. "When they misbehave, she will reprimand them, but always from the perspective of motherhood... There's an empathy to it - although I'm not allowed to have empathy, because I'm an alien. So that makes it interesting..."

It's certainly an unexpected description of the character since Ajak was depicted very differently in the comic books. Nevertheless, we trust that Zhao and Hayek were doing the right thing for the movie.

Eternals will also star Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, and Angelina Jolie. The film is scheduled for release on November 5, 2021.

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