Justice League comes out soon. Hopefully, Warner Bros realizes that they need to put Jason Momoa and Gal Gadot front and center for the promotional tour. Hopefully, Warner Bros realizes that Ben Affleck should be shuffled off somewhere and not seen for a few months. But that’s not going to happen, I know. Still, Gal is being pushed and I’m enjoying it. Gal covers the December issue of Elle Magazine, and this is one of the better interviews I’ve read with her. She’s an interesting person, but she often seems sort of purposefully bland in interviews. But she talks a lot about her husband and what she’s like in relationships and more – you can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Some of her family died in the Holocaust: “One of the stories I’m developing is about the Holocaust from a women’s perspective. I feel like this is part of my mission, to tell the story, because it was such a horror, and he always told me if you forget about your history, the history will repeat itself—especially now, with everything that’s going on.”
Her upper-ear-lobe piercing: “I turned 28, and I felt, My God, this is a serious number— everyone has their number. I said, I’ve gotta do something to make myself feel young again. I’m too coward to do a tattoo.”
Meeting her husband Jaron Varsano at the age of 20: “The boyfriend in high school I had been with for four years, we went our separate ways, and I was fine with that. But then I had another relationship and another relationship, and they were all older than me, and they kept on breaking up with me! And I’m like a Labrador puppy—I just need to be with someone, be loved and hugged. I love to laugh. I don’t like to be by myself. So as a kicked puppy, I went to the desert, and I took Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose, a university psychology book. It talks about what triggers us as people, what we’re affected by, the fact that there’s no such thing as falling in love. You don’t fall in the net of love. Then Jaron got there with mutual friends, and we all stayed in the same area on the dune in tents.”
Jaron ignored her: “And he came, and he didn’t look at me twice. And that annoyed me because he asked me for a light, and I gave it to him, and he just”—she looks the other way. “What’s with the overconfidence? The food was so bad there, like super not-attractive food. So Jaron drove to this French restaurant an hour and a half from there, and he bought the entire menu and brought it back to everyone. So we were sitting in a circle, and I’m like Mama Goose serving food for everyone and bringing them the plate; and he’s sitting next to me, and I just put my hand on his thigh, and that was it for him. We started talking until the sun set and the sun rose. The entire night.”
Their marriage: They have two daughters—Alma, five, and Maya, nine months—and after nine years of marriage, Gadot is still a goner. “He’s my superman, the love of my life…how far can I go with this?”
So he ignored her until she touched his thigh and then suddenly it was love and they’ve never been apart? And she was only 20 years old at the time! I mean, granted, sometimes you just know and they’ve made it nine years, and that’s not nothing. But still – it seems more like what she described, “I don’t like to be by myself.” She wanted to be WITH someone, anyone. As for a Holocaust film from a woman’s perspective… I mean, The Diary of Anne Frank, but I know what Gal is saying. Gal is talking about how Hollywood has made WWII all about how white dudes saved the world from Nazis. There’s more nuance there, and yes, there are many women’s stories which have never been told.
Photos courtesy of Paola Kudacki for Elle Magazine.
‘There’s more nuance there, and yes, there are many women’s stories which have never been told.’
Like what? No women were fighting the war, so they didn’t save the day.
you’re kidding, right? you can’t possibly think that just because women weren’t actively fighting as soldiers that there aren’t a million women’s stories about the Holocaust and the war that should be told?
Read a book, Ruth.
because of course there were no women on the holocaust so what stories could possibly be told.
Ya cancelled, Ruth.
Don’t feed the try-hard trolls, guys.
Sarcasm, people. Ruth is snarking at Hollywood’s obsession with warrior men saving the day in WWII.
Oh are y’all close? Tell her next time to do s/ for sarcasm because that read as legit ignorance. It was scary. Lol
Read about Irena Sendler:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler
what do you think women did when men were ‘saving the day’, ruth? i’m genuinely confused as to how you think every kept going on. if there’s one thing that’s it’s incredibly interesting and not explored enough, is the role of women during wars.
women who had never worked in their lives would get jobs, run businesses, and keep a family. some would join the armed forces. this stuff is literally done in school here in the UK.
Oh Ruth, your incredibly sad ignorance is showing.
The woman made the plane’s the weapons nurses saved lives kept the home countries going
Yes there were. Yugoslav partisans ( by some regarded as the most effective anti Nazi resistance group in Europe, but Hollywood pretends that the war only happened in Western Europe) had female soldiers. In my home town there is a street named after one.
But as your sarcasm suggests, the soldiers aren’t the only ones whose stories need to be told.
I really hope this is sarcasm. Otherwise this is ridiculous. One example of many is my Nana built air plane engines, worked in field hospitals and coordinated neighbourhood watches to ensure everyone got into the bomb shelters safely. Helped distribute rations and organised drives for supplies to send to the front.
Women were a large part of the war effort in WW2 (in all wars actually). Might not have been on the front lines marching into war but their contributions in other areas should never be discounted.
Women played a huge role in the resistance, partly because no one suspected them 🙂
“and we all stayed in the same area on the dune in tents.”
This is actually exactly how I met my partner – and it was in the desert in the south of Jordan i.e. right next to Israel.
Any ladies who are looking: the romance is alive in Wadi Rum apparently!
I will never know because when I went to Wadi Rum there was a total white out sandstorm. We couldn’t leave our Martian tent.
I’ve seen a few interviews with her and I think she comes across well – friendly and pretty harmless so “labrador puppy” seem like it could be an accurate description .
Even apart from gender, there is a nuance to this history that does not get conveyed or told. For example, there were Jewish soldiers from Canada who fought against the Nazis in World War II, but we never hear about them because narrative of victimization are privileged.
We also don’t talk about the japense internment camps in America where we rounded them and kept them in camps surrounded by guns and took their property or the black service men who fought for America who came back to sergeragtion and treated like second class citerzins after they fought for others freedom
Come See the Paradise is one of the few I can think of about internment. Lovely movie with Dennis Quaid as a WWII soldier and Tamlyn Tomita as his wife. Plus the book-and-film Snow Falling on Cedars.
Renee you are right the victimization narrative is being push down our throat constantly it’s like a competition of who suffered the most…we don’t hear much about all the other genocides that have happened like the Native Americans, Bosnia, Darfur, Rwanda, Armenia, Palestine, Cambodia, the Pygmy, Maori tribes, Australian’s aboriginals tribes….
One of my grandfathers friends was a Jewish man from our hometown. They both were in the Royal Canadian Airforce. He had to be bailed out of his plane at 21. He was a PoW in Germany for 9 months – at the end of those 9 months, he weighed only 91 pounds.
When it comes to BIG productions though, for the most part, things revolve heavily around the US. Canada has some insanely impressive war heroes, and amazing stories of bravery, but hollywood productions happen in the US, and of course they’re going to want to tell THEIR story most. On top of that – they know that a movie showing suffering is going to do better when it comes to oscar bait, and awards like that.
OT but that last pic is so awkward
I love Gal, but really? Some dude ignores you and then you hit on him by putting your hand ON HIS THIGH?
I mean, obviously it worked out for them, and they seem happy. But to other young women thinking, “oh, if he ignores me, I’ll just have to flirt harder!” please don’t play this game. Please don’t touch people intimately without their consent. Please use your words first.
Seriously??? Is she not allowed her own “how I met my husband” story without someone putting this spin on it?
my “spin” is describing how she told the tale in her own words. Imagine how this would go down if their roles were switched, and a man told a story of how his bride-to-be brushed him off, and then he flirted with her by putting his hand on her leg. The internet would come for him holding pitchforks. And here it’s like “tee, hee, isn’t it cute how I, a woman, was sexually forward.”
Of course the power balance is not the same at all, but still, we need to take this shit seriously. And being sexually forward is fine so long as you’re not intimately touching people without consent. Obviously SHE’s fine, and they seem totally fine, but impressionable people are going to see it as some sort of romantic ideal of how you win a man, and that doesn’t sit right with me.
The only person with the right to determine whether her touch was ok in that situation is HIM. She’s telling a simple story about how she met her husband who she went on to marry and is still with nine years later. She should be able to do without it turning into some kind of good touch bad touch lecture. Presumably he was fine with it given the outcome. He thought it was ok….it’s ok.
Anne Frank was very much a little girl so I don’t consider that to be a woman’s perspective. Even so, that seems to be the only female perspective that is well-known; The Zoo Keeper’s Wife was interesting. I would like to see a movie about the Rhineland Bastards.
Aside from the part about the Holocaust, does anyone else think her comments about relationships make her sound totally needy and pathetic? She basically admits she cannot be alone. Sorry, but it sounds like she has such an unhealthy mindset!
She went to a course called “Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose” and clearly she learned nothing. Did she learn why she chose a man who actively ignored her? Describing herself as a Labrador puppy is so unappealing. This type of neediness is not healthy and her relationship sounds so odd.
If she had 20 pounds more on her hips such labrador-puppy behaviour would be called desparately needy.
I used to work in a gallery where her husband used to have some luxury hotel or something. She would come to our place and umm lets just say she isn’t the brightest.
Whenever I used to hear about celebrities being not genuine and PR trained I would roll my eyes. Not anymore.
Yes she seems profoundly stupid…she should hang out with the Kardashians!
What about her made you think she wasn’t bright? She apparently was studying pre-law before deciding to focus on her acting and modeling career.
Just wait till her comments about Palestinians become common knowledge. In those comments it seems she has a problem with ra_c*ially non-white people especially if they are arabs.
Yeah she sucks.
I appreciate you so much for seeing things clearly! *hugs*
Truth. Thank you for saying this.
Thank you for bringing this up.
This needs to be better known!