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"I had to be in a bikini for half of the small time that I was on-screen, and I had to dance with a snake, which I have a phobia for. So it seemed like a really bad job, but that I really needed at the time. I was really shocked when my five minutes on-screen became so memorable and that people are still talking about this film."

Reader, it has happened already. Less than a month after it debuted, the Black Mirror episode Joan Is Awful has already become the unlikely figurehead of the strike. It's the story of a woman who, at the end of each day, realises with horror that her actions have been folded into a Dropout-style biographical drama, where all her bad traits and regrettable decisions are played out onscreen by Salma Hayek. Except, as the episode goes along, we learn that it isn’t Hayek at all; it’s an AI-generated likeness of Hayek, commissioned by unethical executives working for a monolithic streaming platform. It couldn’t be more timely. A sticking point of the Sag-Aftra strike is the potential that AI could soon render all screen actors obsolete. Chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland laid bare the AMPTP’s so-called “groundbreaking AI proposal,” which holds the potential to wipe out an entire pathway to breaking into the industry, as well as a reliable source of income for many. The reported proposal hinged on the ability for background actors to be “scanned, get paid for one day’s pay” and for that company to “own that scan of their image, their likeness, and to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation.” It’s a similar line to the one currently taken by the striking WGA writers. Eventually, they claim, technology will advance enough to make an AI-generated script that is indistinguishable from one created by a human. These scripts would be cheap and instant, and – even though they’re essentially composite jobs, made by scraping existing scripts – they would immediately put an entire profession out of work.

Salma Hayek as Serendipity in Dogma (1999)

“Salma Hayek did not have a choreographer for her dance, because, according to her, you can’t choreograph the live snake she wore around her neck. So director Robert Rodriguez just told her to feel the music and dance to it.”

Salma Hayek + Dancing

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) | Dogma (1999)

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996)