Gal Gadot Accuses Male Director Who Dissed ‘Wonder Woman’ of ‘Looking for Publicity’

When director James Cameron called “Wonder Woman” a “step backwards” in The Guardian in August, the film’s star, Gal Gadot, remained silent. Now, four months after the controversial comments went viral and spurred a heated response from the film’s director Patty Jenkins, Gadot is ready to speak out—and she isn’t holding back.

The 32-year-old actress addressed the criticism in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, in which she explained that her silence wasn’t out of apathy, but out of a decision to not give Cameron the “publicity” she suspected he wanted. “I didn’t want to give him the stage,” Gadot said.

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Though Gadot admitted that she is a “big fan” of the “creative and professional side” of Cameron’s work, she took an issue with his comments, which also included calling “Wonder Woman’s” positive reviews “misguided” and “self-congratulatory back-patting.”

Gadot accused Cameron of dragging “Wonder Woman’s” name through the mud to promote his own movie, “Terminator 2: Judgement Day,” which features the Sarah Connor,  an android hunter, who he thought was a better representation of feminism than “Wonder Woman.” (He argued that Wonder Woman was a “beauty icon,” while Connor was not.)

“When it happened, the timing of when it happened, he was promoting another movie of his,” Gadot said. “It was like he was looking for publicity and I just didn’t want to give him the stage.”

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Cameron’s comments, which questioned the feminist stance of “Wonder Woman,” was immediately slammed by Jenkins, as well as stars like Lena Dunham and Cher. Jenkins argued that there is “no right or wrong kind of powerful woman,” and that just because Wonder Woman is less “hard” and “troubled” than Connor, doesn’t mean she’s less “strong.”

https://twitter.com/PattyJenks/status/900917648015405062

Props to Jenkins and Gadot for putting Cameron in his place. We hope he learned something in the months following his comments.