Gal Gadot is the latest celebrity to pick apart the critically panned “Imagine” montage video that circulated at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project was arranged by the Wonder Woman star in 2020 and comprised of various celebrities—among them Will Ferrell, Sia, Natalie Portman, Zoë Kravitz, Jimmy Fallon, Sarah Silverman, Mark Ruffalo, Norah Jones, and Leslie Odom Jr.—singing John Lennon’s hit 1971 song. As it made the rounds online, the theoretically positive tribute was swiftly labeled as tone-deaf, an assertion Gadot told told InStyle she now agrees with.
“I was calling Kristen [Wiig] and I was like, ‘Listen, I want to do this thing.’ The pandemic was in Europe and Israel before it came here [to the U.S.] in the same way,” she said. “I was seeing where everything was headed. But [the video] was premature. It wasn’t the right timing, and it wasn’t the right thing. It was in poor taste. All pure intentions, but sometimes you don’t hit the bull’s-eye, right? I felt like I wanted to take the air out of it, so that [event] was a delightful opportunity to do that.”
The DCEU mainstay previously spoke about the tribute in an interview with Vanity Fairback in October 2020, also leaning on the “good intentions” angle.
“Sometimes, you know, you try and do a good deed and it’s just not the right good deed,” she told the magazine. “I had nothing but good intentions and it came from the best place, and I just wanted to send light and love to the world… But yeah, I started it, and I can only say that I meant to do something good and pure, and it didn’t transcend.”
After co-starring with the Rock in what he called “the biggest movie in the history of Netflix” with November’s Red Notice, it was revealed last month that Gadot will soon star alongside Armie Hammer in Death on the Nile, making it Hammer’s first role since being accused of sexual assault last year. Many observers noticed the trailer barely features Hammer, likely because of the abuse and cannibalism scandal that has continued to plague his career. The Death on the Nile trailer instead focuses heavily on Gadot, as she’s featured in almost every scene:
