Gal Gadot has been cast as Wonder Woman in the films Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman which are set to be released in 2016 and 2017. Gal was born in Rosh Ha’ayin, Israel and made her debut in the fourth Fast & Furious film in 2009. An interview has been translated from Israel on a SuperHeroHype forum. In the interview she discusses her reaction to receiving the part and her preparation for the role. The full interview is in two parts and can be read here and here. These are the highlights on her thoughts on getting the part.
During the last two and a half years since her last movie, Fast & Furious, until she got the Wonder Woman role, Gadot was constantly flying between LA and Tel Aviv. Everyone told her she needed to take advantage of the momentum she was in, the publicity, she needed to strike while the iron is hot, work on her accent and meet producers for lunch. Gadot listened to everyone and like a disciplined soldier was living the Hollywood dream even if inside it felt like a little nightmare. In fact, her audition for Wonder Woman was a few days after she decided to book a ticket back to Israel, maybe forever.
Gal: “It was a time with a lot of ‘almosts’ and read throughs with lead actors and it just didn’t happen. I told my husband, Yaron, ‘ I don’t know how much more I can take.’ I’ve had enough. I felt like I was dragging my family in the world and that it wasn’t working out. I’m a Taurus. I need stability, for me, for my child, for my family. I felt like I was trying to hard – and the harder you try, the more it slips away – I didn’t have the energy anymore. We were in LA and I just got rejected for a part I was in eight meetings for. I told Yaron ‘ let’s just give up and stop’. And Yaron, god bless him, said ‘ What will happen, will happen. We are enjoying the road and we get to see the world’. A week before we left LA I got a call to get to a secret audition at Warner Brothers. We already bought tickets and I wasn’t sure when I’ll be back in LA. I was in energy-less state of mind. Then I did the audition and had a blast. It was so much fun.”
Gal talked about where she was when she got the news and her reaction to the news.
Gal: “I never had to wait so long for a reply. It was a month and a half of torture. It was a crazy roller-coaster. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. On the day they promised a reply I was flying to NY for another gig. When the plane landed I saw I had a lot of missed calls. I called my agent still sitting in the plane with the belt on. She told me ‘Congratulations! You got the part.’ During the flight I sat next to a really nice man, a scientist from The Weizmann Institute of Science. He talked the entire flight about quantum physics. Now, imagine me, sitting on the plane, looking for a little piece of privacy, burrowing my head between my legs and starting to scream ‘Oh my god!’ again and again, because I just couldn’t believe it. Then I hung up the phone and he looked at me like ‘what just happened?’ and asks if everything was alright. I told him ‘I can’t really say anything but you will probably read about it tomorrow in the paper.’”
Preparations for the role took many months during which she worked with a personal trainer that taught her everything a super heroine needs to know in order to take down villains.
Gal: “It was very intensive. When I was young I was a real tomboy so I really enjoyed the experience. I see Alma wanting to dress like a princess and put on lipstick and it surprised me. I asked my mom if I was like that too but she said all I wanted back then was to play ball, sweat, and scrap my knees.”
We are so used to light-weight actors that we have to take note of Gadot’s great success. Part after part, achievement follows achievement, contract after contract. Next year she will be in three big movies: Batman V Superman, Triple Nine, and Criminal.
“Do you even understand what happened this year? How big your achievement is?”
Gal: “No.”
“Do you want me to explain it to you?”
Gal: “I get it but I don’t really get it. I don’t think it’s possible to understand it while it’s happening to you. I only understand I was a beauty queen a year after it happened. I have a delay on my life, really. I only understand what I’m doing after I’m done doing it and I think it really helps me. I look at it from a very rational point of view: I have a job, I have a project, I need to bust my ass and give it my whole and that’s it. After the movie will come out I will sit at the screening and shake like a chicken.”
“By the way, what are Wonder Woman’s powers?”
Gal: “She has unbelievable endurance. She is exceptionally strong. She can jump really high and practically fly. She knows tons of martial arts styles. She is a strong and serious Woman.”
Gal Gadot will have her Wonder Woman debut in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice on March 25, 2016, and Wonder Woman is scheduled to release in theaters on June 23, 2017. Justice League Part One and Justice League Part Two are announced to come out in 2017 and 2019, which Gal will also star as Wonder Woman.
