Salma Hayek plays an immigrant healer who faces off with an arrogant billionaire real estate developer in her latest film, “Beatriz at Dinner,” by indie-darling director Miguel Arteta.
“The country has never been so politically divided,” Hayek told us at a Cinema Society screening of the film at Metrograph.
“It’s become a little bit of a comedy. Sometimes a comedy of errors, most of the time a dark comedy, the political climate in this country.”
Hayek — who’s publicly bashed President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, and has claimed she once turned him down for a date years ago — added optimistically, “It’s my hope that we have a deeper understanding and willingness to have a conversation between different ideologies, and a stronger understanding of the things that bind us together.”
She’s now married to a different billionaire, François-Henri Pinault.
Co-star John Lithgow chimed in, “Almost everybody I interact with, we all agree . . . and there are other segments of society where there is exactly the same problem.”
Later, guests partied at Mr. Purple.
Chloë Sevigny, who also stars in the film, quipped of her social-media strategy, “I love blocking people.”
At the recent Cannes Film Festival, Hayak flew in a mariachi band from Paris to show up at 70th-anniversary gala dinner as a celebration for the Mexican filmmakers there.