Appearing in the first episode of the latest season of Black Mirror as a heightened version of herself, Salma Hayek proclaims that she has dyslexic. The reveal may leave some people scratching their heads and taking to the internet to search “Does Salma Hayek have dyslexia?” and then immediately feeling bad for the search because, well, why is it any of our business? But hello, if that’s you, you’ve come to the right place. 

In the episode – titled “Joan is Awful – Hayek appears alongside Annie Murphy and Michael Cera in a twisty story about an average woman named Joan (Murphy) who discovers that her life is being turned into a prestige television drama on the worldwide streaming platform Streamberry, which is a fun spoof of Netflix. 

In the fictional televised program, Joan is portrayed by Hollywood’s very own Hayek, who, in the series is played by Hayek, herself. Spoilers past this point. Eventually, it is revealed that both Murphy’s Joan and Hayek’s Salma are one of many computer-generated versions of someone else in an alternate reality using “digital-likeness” of another’s face – in this case, Hayek’s and Murphy’s faces. 

As drama ensues, Murphy decides to go on an embarrassing, cringey rampage, which ends with her dropping a deuce in a church during a wedding, knowing that a version of Salma will have to mimic her actions on the fictional show. In response, Salma gets furious and meets with her lawyer in hopes of removing the show from broadcast. 

“Never in my wildest nightmares I thought I’d see myself defecating in a church,” Hayek tells her lawyer in the episode. Unfortunately, he has an unhelpful response, telling her, “Well, technically that’s that Joan character, not you.”

“So, this character, whose face do they have?” Salma asks, to which her lawyer says, “Your face.” She continues, “So, whose anus is doing the shitting?” The lawyer continues to explain that when she subscribed to Streamberry, she signed the terms and conditions which state they are allowed to use her likeness for the fictional show. “You know I don’t read this crap!” she proclaims. “I am a dyslexic, talented actress with questionable English!” 

Let’s stop here: was that news to you? To quench the anticipated thirst of viewers wondering if the real-life Hayek has dyslexia, we did some digging and found that the acclaimed actor has opened up about her struggles with the learning disability in the past, most recently in 2021. 

While doing press for The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, Hayek revealed that she had trouble pronouncing the title due to her dyslexia. “I have to say that I started practicing saying the name of the movie since we were shooting it because I am dyslexic,” she told Jimmy Fallon at the time. 

Before that, in a 2009 interview with WebMD, Hayek said she was diagnosed with dyslexia when she was a teenager, but never felt that it hindered her education. “I’m really a fast learner. I always was, which is maybe why in high school they didn’t realize I had dyslexia. I skipped years without studying too much,” she said. As for how it affects her acting career, she said, “[The dyslexia] doesn’t bother me now. Some people read really fast, but you’ll ask them questions about the script and they’ll forget. I take a long time to read a script, but I read it only once. I directed a movie [The Maldonado Miracle], and I never brought the script to the set.”

Props to Hayek for her openness about having dyslexia – and bigger props to her and Black Mirror writer Charlie Brooker for the hilarious speech. (I don’t think I’ll ever stop yelling, “Doesn’t my asshole have any rights?!”)

Black Mirror is currently streaming on Netflix.