Salma Hayek hit Ryan Reynolds exactly where she wasn't supposed to in ‘Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard’

'If you can’t take a punch in show business, you don’t belong in show business.'
June 9, 2021 4:18 p.m. EST
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Back in 2017, Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson teamed up for the buddy action film The Hitman’s Bodyguard, and now they’re reuniting for Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, which will see Salma Hayek in a larger role. 

Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard stars Reynold as Michael Bryce, who is still an unlicensed bodyguard and under scrutiny since the last film. Now, he's being forced into action by Darius (Jackson) and his ex-partner's wife, the international con artist Sonia (Hayek). The trio gets in over their heads in a global plot and finds that they are all that stands between Europe and a powerful madman (Antonio Banderas).

Etalk’s Tyrone Edwards sat down to talk with Reynolds and Hayek to break down exactly how violent things got on set.

Hayek had to slap Reynolds a few times for the film and, when asked, Ryan said Hayek's hits are some of the hardest he's endured on a movie.

“Tyrone, it’s because she connects!” Reynolds said.

“It’s because she’s not pulling the punch. It’s because her tiny, little right hook is hitting my cheekbone and breaking my orbital bone and all kinds of other bones in my face,” Reynolds said, adding that he wasn’t kidding.

Hayek said that she was allowed to hit Reynolds “everywhere in the face” except for “one exact square."

“You know where it’s like, 'Please try to avoid the glasses. Just [hit] here, avoid the glasses,' and I really was very focused on aiming in the right direction but hit it right exactly where I was told not to,” she added.

“Hey, look, if you can’t take a punch in show business, you don’t belong in show business. I’m sorry. You got to be able to take a punch,” Reynolds said.

Hayek added that the best part of hitting Reynolds was the sound he made, which she said, “wasn’t even human.”

Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is obviously full of action but it's also a comedy with star power and lots of cussing. 

Hayek said she was “determined” to “curse more times than Sam.”

“And I think I won because I did it in two languages,” she added.

Reynolds said he didn’t swear as much as his castmates. “I did swear a little bit. My character’s kind of in some existential, esoteric, death spiral since the opening frame to somewhere close to the middle of the film,” he explained.

“For the most part, my character is obsessed with himself, which is kind of in and of itself where the comedy generates from the character. But I loved sort of being the third wheel to Salma and Sam, who are already just, in real life, so much fun to watch but when they rolled the cameras, I just had to be honest. I would just sit there and kind of just watch their back and forth and just react and that was the comedy,” the Deadpool star said.

“But that’s where the comedy comes from because you see the action is just to create the situation for the reaction, which is where the true comedy comes from. He is the king of reacting comedy,” Hayek said of her co-star.

 

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