Salma Hayek told a fairly innocuous and highly unrelatable story about her pet rescue owl, Kering, who wreaked all sorts of animal-related havoc on The Ellen Show this week.

Her feathered companion made quite the impression on the talk show host, who was left bewildered by Hayek’s accounts of the pet perching on top of her head and biting her feet in the middle of the night. You know, typical, good old-fashioned owl stuff.

But an anecdote about the pet regurgitating a hairball on a famous friend, whom Hayek later identified as Harry Styles, has some fans wondering why exactly the two stars were together at her home in the first place. 

“One time, there was a very important celebrity — I will not say his name — and he was really excited about the owl and was hoping that the owl would go on his head because it was on me,” Hayek revealed.

Styles apparently expressed the need for “an owl in my life” before letting the creature sit atop his glorious and much-fawned-over head of hair. 

“The minute he least expected it, he came on his head but then he did the thing and this thing came out, this ball of rat hair was on his head,” she explained. “He was OK, he was kind of cool. He didn’t scream.”

Hayek reiterated that Styles was “super cool” about the incident, adding that she hopes she’s “not in trouble” for mentioning Styles by name. 

Given Hayek’s upcoming role in Marvel’s much-anticipated blockbuster Eternals, fans were immediately on high alert when she mentioned her connection to the former One Direction singer. 

For months, rumours have swirled that Styles will make an appearance in Chloe Zhao’s epoch-spanning tentpole as Starfox, the brother of the snap-happy warlord Thanos, who served as the ultimate big bad for Marvel films up until Avengers: Endgame.

Fans have even mocked up designs for Styles in costume as the character, who is a member of the immortal alien race at the centre of Eternals and later teams up with the Avengers, according to comic book canon. 

Last September, journalist Kris Tapley fueled the suspicion by reportedly writing in a since-deleted tweet that Styles would indeed appear in a “Marvel film no one knows he’s in.”

Internet sleuths also noticed that the Watermelon Sugar singer had followed a number of Eternals cast members, including Gemma Chan and Richard Madden, on Instagram, further confirming in some people’s minds that a secret cameo was afoot. 

After Hayek’s interview, fans took the breadcrumb and ran with it on social media, with one person on YouTube writing, “HARRY IS BASICALLY CONFIRMED IN ETERNALS.”

The highly secretive studio has, of course, stayed silent amid the speculation, as the upcoming film is shrouded in mystery apart from what we’ve seen in the first trailer, which arrived last month and broke all sorts of records. 

Eternals, which is scheduled to open in cinemas in Novemeber would be the latest in a string of high-profile acting gigs for Styles. After wrapping production on his new girlfriend Olivia Wilde’s film Don’t Worry Darling, he has also just finished filming the upcoming romantic drama My Policeman alongside The Crown star Emma Corrin.