(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Mon 1 December 2025 21:15, UK
It’s hard to envisage living a life where someone says to you: “OK, you have to travel the world and stay in luxury hotels, and we’ll pay you millions to do it, and the only drawback is you have to spend literally every waking hour with the astonishingly beautiful Salma Hayek” and being upset about that, but Antonio Banderas somehow managed it back in the day.
While we discuss just how that’s even possible, I want you to think about the words Banderas is saying, but do it while imagining that cute face that the Banderas-voiced Puss in Boots does from Shrek when he wants something or is trying to avoid getting told off. You know, the one with the big eyes when he holds his hat up.
In fact, it was Puss in Boots, the Shrek spin-off that caused all the problems for Banderas back in 2011 as he and his co-star, or rather co-voice, Hayek were ‘forced’ to go on a gruelling promotional tour to support the release of the movie that included doing some 739 interviews in just 11 days, which to be fair to them does sound like overkill, and not that much fun at all.
Banderas said at the time, “We travelled to nine countries, nine premieres, three different continents… It was fun and difficult too. It’s just weird when you’re doing interviews. Basically, they (reporters and interviewers) 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 were just doing interviews all the time together – it’s just weird.”
Now, (are you picturing the cat’s face like we agreed? Good) you might be reading this while on your lunch break at the office just after paying a hefty council tax bill, or in the midst of doing an Excel spreadsheet with a winter cold and thinking ‘that still doesn’t sound that bad’, but remember they only got paid a small fortune to do it. Things got even worse, though; they had to go to ITALY, of all places.
As Banderas added: “By the time that we were in Rome, we started kind of hating each other. 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.”
Imagine if you will, the look on the face of a nurse after a 12-hour shift in Accident and Emergency at Christmas time. It’s probably nothing compared to the shitstorm Banderas and Hayek went through, as they had to endure endless questions about cartoon cats while sipping sparkling water in a hotel suite. It really does put things into perspective.
Thank heaven for small mercies, though, because the harrowing experience wasn’t so bad that Banderas was put off getting behind the microphone as the catnip-addicted, sword-wielding feline again for the 2022 sequel Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, although it did take him eleven years to pluck up the strength.
Even Salma Hayek returned, showing that the bad blood didn’t run too badly between them, especially not with sizeable paychecks to ease the mistrust.
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