Waiting For

Wonder Woman Finally Gets Her Pageant Queen, Ex-combat-trainer) Is Wielding The Lasso Of Truth.
 

- Allison Glock

 Gadot, 32, graciously accepts the compliment, smoothing her sweater over her Wolford black pants and leaning back with an exhale familiar to any woman who has ever been in her third trimester (her daughter Maya was born in March, joining 5-year-old sister Alma). Her hair is pulled into a tidy ponytail, eyes lined with black liquid. The look—sharp, cosmopolitan ease—is a refined contrast to the L.A. scene (where many adults still seem to compete over who can spend the most money to dress like a child). When the visitor at last departs the table, Gadot winces, embarrassed by the unsolicited attention.

“When I first came to Los Angeles, I couldn’t read people,” she says frankly. “I always felt there was a subtext.” It’s an opaqueness absent in her home country, where unfiltered boldness rules the day. “In Israel, people have chutzpah,” she asserts, raising a fist. “People take issue with it, but I’d rather have that than play games. Here, everyone’s like, ‘We love you; you’re so wonderful.’ I prefer to know the truth, not waste time.”

It is this directness that makes Gadot the best kind of girl’s girl, a woman with backbone and no taste for bullshit. You see it in her public appearances, where she is unfailingly quick to give shout-outs to female colleagues. You hear it from Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, who calls Gadot one of the most genuine, solid women she’s ever met. You feel it when Gadot meets you in person for the first time and gives you a full-body-contact hug—even though she is eight months pregnant, a stage where most women don’t want anything, let alone anyone, touching their body. A body that, pregnancy aside, has been the subject of much public scrutiny since Gadot’s casting as Wonder Woman.