Red Table Talk: Salma Hayek On Menopause, Her Growing Boobs & 'The Matrix'

Who knew that Salma Hayek and Jada Pinkett-Smith were such great friends?

Source: Red Table Talk / Facebook Watch

The Oscar-nominated actress — who Jada reveals is one of the inspirations behind “Red Table Talk” – joined the table this week for a revealing conversation about motherhood, menopause and marriage in a new “Red Table Talk” episode streaming now on Facebook Watch HERE.

Some of our favorite moments were when Salma shared how she lost out on a role in “The Matrix” because she was lazy.

“We were one of the four finalists for ‘The Matrix,’” Salma shared. “And so we had jumped through many hurdles and, you know, screen testing and many auditions, and they brought these stunt coordinators from Asia, and it was the physical test.”

“Now, I’m flexible, I’m agile, but I’m lazy. I never really went to the gym. And they said to me, ‘You have to run.’ I go, ‘To where?’ ‘Around. You have to run around.’ I couldn’t even go around the room once. I was like [panting] and in comes Jada. A mean, lean, sexy machine. Oh, my God! She was so good! It was so embarrassing. She was so freed. She was so focused. She was so disciplined. She was so capable. She was so gracious. And I just looked at this woman and I thought to myself, ‘That’s what I wanna be when I grow up.’ Yup.”

“It was impressive. She was really impressive,” Salma says of Jada’s audition. “I didn’t get the part… So now when I’m gonna–every time I’m gonna do action, I say, ‘No, no, no. I better start, like, getting a little bit of stamina, and I’m gonna practice the routines…’”

Salma and Jada revealed they finally got their opportunity to work together when Salma directed Jada’s “Nada Se Compara” music video and was the one who suggested Jada be naked.

“I think I really got to know Salma, you know, many years ago when I called her to direct a video for me,” Jada revealed. “I was doing human trafficking advocacy, and she was gracious enough to–”

“Yes, but, you know, we had known each other by now,” Salma chimed in. “She was very dear to me. She called me and she said, ‘What are you doing?’ She goes, ‘I did this song. I sang it in Spanish. And you’re directing the music video.’ Her Spanish was perfect. Her Spanish was impeccable. And I said, ‘Who wrote this for you?’ On top of everything else, she goes, ‘I did.’”

“But I do have to tell you, Salma said that she would do the video, but she said only if I did it naked,” Jada recalled. “She said, ‘You gonna be naked.’ She made sure too.”

“It’s a love song about sex trafficking, and the story is about trusting a man that destroys you, luring you into sex trafficking,” Salma said. “And I said, ‘I think it’s important that you are as vulnerable as these women, because the obsession that men have with women’s bodies, it’s really threatening for us.’”

“And so she accepted to be as naked with her body as she was with her voice,” Salma added. “And so she was very brave. She had never done it before.”

Another great part of the episode is when Salma talked about how she convinced the producers of her new movie “Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” to allow her character to be in her 50s and going through menopause.

“Salma, you are whooping, kicking ass, your funny, beautiful, witty self,” Jada congratulated her. “I mean, it is such a pleasure to see you in a role like that, and what was really impressive is, like, you were like, ‘Bunk that. I’m letting people know I’m 54 and hot.’”

“I mean, you know, there’s always the silver fox guy getting in the car and doing his business,” Willow interjected. “We need more women in that role, I feel like.”

“It was conceived as maybe a girl in her 40s, but the truth is that I said, ‘Why?’” Salma revealed. “And I say, ‘Let’s make it a woman in her 50s, and I think we should make it about her having to do all this action while she’s going through menopause.’ And we had to convince some people, but they’re like, ‘Do we have to say the word?’ And I’m like, ‘It doesn’t matter about words. What matters is that we go through it.’”

“There’s a very important message behind it because what we’re saying here is that there’s no expiration dates for women,” Salma added. “That has to go. Because you can kick ass at any age. You can hold your own at any age. You can dream at any age. You can be romantic at any age. We have the right to be loved –for who we are at the place that we are.”

“We’re not just here to make babies,” Salma continued. “We’re not just here to baby the man. We’re not just here to, you know, service everything and everyone around us, and then when you–when the kids go away or where there is no kids and you hit that age, it’s almost like expiration date for the eggs, that means expiration date for you as a woman.”

Salma has always been known for being a petite woman who is very busty, but in her “Red Table Talk” episode she revealed that she’s never had a breast augmentation. Salma says her breasts have grown throughout different stages of her life due to menopause, pregnancy, and weight gain over the years.”

Gammy asked Salma if she was experiencing symptoms of menopause.

“Ugh. I’ve been for a long time now,” Salma revealed. “I think it was my mid-40s. I had to take a test. And the questions were terrifying. They were asking me things like, ‘Are your ears growing and there’s hair coming out of them? Are you growing [a] mustache and a beard? Are you easily irritable? Are you crying for no reason? Are you gaining a lot of weight that doesn’t go away no matter what you do? Are you shrinking?'”

“And then they ask you, ‘Is your vagina dry?’ And I thought to myself, it doesn’t matter. If you have hair coming out of your ears and nose and a mustache and a beard and you’re shrinking and you’re getting big and you’re in a bad mood all day but crying at the same time, nobody’s coming near your vagina. Nobody’s gonna be coming near that thing. Makes no difference.”

“But I’ll tell you what they didn’t tell you,” Salma continued. “Are your boobs growing?”

“Whoa. Do boobs grow during menopause?” Jada asked.

“Yes,” Salma revealed. “The boobs grow a lot. For some women, they get smaller. But there are some women that when you gain weight, your boobs grow… And other women that when you have children and you breastfeed, your boobs grow, and they don’t go back down… And then in some other cases, when you are in menopause, they grow again, and I just happen to be one of those women that it happened in every single step. When I gain weight, when I got pregnant, and when I’m in menopause. A lot of people say that I had breast augmentation. I don’t blame them. My boobs were smaller. And so was the rest of my body. But they just have kept growing. Many, many sizes.”

Dang we definitely didn’t know that. Didn’t you love this episode? We definitely could have watched another half hour with Salma — EASILY. Who have been some of your favorite guests on “Red Table Talk”?

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