Gadot Reveals How She Learned She Was About To Become Wonder Woman

CBR

By Jesse Gormley

Published Jul 26, 2016

Gal Gadot reveals the exact moment she learned she was cast as the hero, and Patty Jenkins explains how she landed her role as director.

During this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego, DC Comics held a panel celebrating the 75th anniversary of Wonder Woman's comic book debut. The panel, moderated by Tiffany Smith, host of DC All Access, included DC Comics' Co-Publisher Jim Lee, current "Wonder Woman" artist Nikola Scott, "Wonder Woman" director Patty Jenkins and DC Cinematic Universe's current Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot.

During the 45 minute panel, Smith asked Gal Gadot how she found out she got the role. "I had to wait for a very long six weeks before I got the call." Gadot told the audience, explaining that she got the news after a long flight. "The moment we landed in Los Angeles, I opened my phone, still sitting on the plane, and I saw so many missed calls from my agent."

Sitting on the tarmac, Gal couldn't figure out what the fuss was. So much time had passed since her audition for Wonder Woman, she had forgotten about the role. "At the beginning I was super excited, I was waiting. Every... you know when you check your phone every second? I was obsessed. And then it was like, 'Enough. It's not mine.'"

Fast forward six weeks later, to Gadot sitting on that fateful airplane in L.A.'s airport with a ton of messages waiting for her on her phone. "So I called them [her agents]. They got everyone on the line. There were, like, nine people on the line. And they said, 'Well, Gal, you're Wonder Woman.'"

Gal, though, would have to contain her excitement. With a plane full of people still around her, Gadot's agent informed her that she couldn't tell anyone just yet. An announcement still had to come first from Warner Bros. A helpless Gal shrugged to the audience. "What do you do?" Gadot questioned. "But, it was worth the wait. For sure."

Smith posed the same question to "Wonder Woman" director, Patty Jenkins, who replied, "It's an unbelievably long story." Jenkins quickly led the panel through her love as a kid for all things Wonder Woman, how seeing "Superman: the Movie" was a "definitive moment" in her life, and how experiences in college combined her love of painting, music and story to make her realize: "I wanna, like, one day... I wanna make something. And it was just this movie. It's what I was imagining. Even though I didn't know it."

Struggling to put her feelings about making the movie into words, Jenkins continued, "I wanna make people feel like movies had made me feel... Wonder Woman is my favorite superhero... I love an origin story. Nobody had done it. And so when I made 'Monster,' and I go out meeting people, the first meeting I had with Warner Bros. I walked in, they were like, 'Great. What do you want to do?'" Jenkins recounted, slamming her hand down on the table, "'I want to do Wonder Woman!'"

Check out the entire panel below and revisit CBR's live coverage of the panel here.