It was a moment Salma Hayek likely won’t forget. The Grown Ups actress dished on working with Duchess Meghan for the upcoming issue of British Vogue — and explained how top secret she had to keep things.
“I was in the car and [British Vogue editor in chief Edward Enninful] said, ‘Listen, I’m going to put somebody on the phone. Are you in the car with people?’ I said ‘Yes.’ He told me, ‘You cannot say the name of the person I’m calling,’” Hayek, 52, recalled to CNN on Wednesday, July 31. “Frankly, I thought it was a joke.”
The activist went on to explain that she and Enninful, 47, are both “very good friends with Naomi Campbell,” so she assumed he was just messing around and was going to put the supermodel, 49, on the line.
“It took a while for the other person to get on the phone. Then she got on the phone and introduced herself,” Hayek said of the Duchess of Sussex, 37. “She introduced herself and was very kind and loving and easygoing.”
Hayek added that Meghan explained she was working on a “project in support of women” — her guest editor gig for the September 2019 British Vogue issue — and wanted the Mexican-born actress to be a part of it.
“‘I’m putting my favorite women on the cover. And you’re definitely one of them,’” Hayek recalled of what the duchess told her. “I was like completely shocked. I did not see it coming that way. She started talking about how she’s been watching me and why me.”
From there, Hayek would fly to London and shoot the top secret cover of the magazine alongside other women hand-picked by Meghan — but she kept her lips locked, not even letting her daughter, Valentina, 11, or husband, François-Henri Pinault, know about it.
“I couldn’t talk about it and I didn’t,” she said. “I felt very honored when we did this photo shoot. No one else knew what it was for. Only me and the photographer, Peter Lindbergh, knew. And all the girls were getting their picture taken for the cover and they didn’t know that Meghan was how they got there.”
After details of the forthcoming issue were released earlier this week, Hayek received a call from Meghan and Enninful congratulating her on keeping mum on the project.
Meghan’s Force for Change issue is set to hit newsstands on Friday, August 2, and also features actors and activists Laverne Cox, Yara Shahidi, Gemma Chan and Jane Fonda. While the California native chose to not appear on the cover, photos of Meghan — that were snapped at the Frogmore Cottage home she shares with husband Prince Harry and their 2-month-old son, Archie — can be found inside the pages of the special issue.
