Gal Gadot Owns up to Major Blunder

Gal Gadot reflected on her “Imagine” viral video candidly in an interview with InStyle Magazine last month. The Wonder Woman star admitted that the clip may have been “in poor taste.” She did not seem to harbor any ill-will toward the people who mocked the video online and turned it into a brutal meme.

Back in March of 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was just ramping up, Gadot contacted several other A-list stars to create a video of them all singing John Lennon’s song “Imagine” in their respective lockdown locations. The video was immediately criticized for being “tone-deaf,” and Gadot admitted that she can see where those critics were coming from. She said that now she thinks the whole thing is “funny” and reminded fans that she had a different perspective on the pandemic at that point. Since she is originally from Israel, Gadot said she was watching the virus’ development closely long before it was a mainstream story in the U.S.

Gadot now believes this perceived foresight helped rive her to create her infamous video. She said she 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… Sometimes you don’t hit the bullseye.”

Gadot’s video also included stars like Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Wiig, Jamie Dornan, Will Ferrel, Mark Ruffalo, Amy Adams, Pedro Pascal, Norah Jones, Maya Rudolph, Sarah Silverman, Zoe Kravitz and Natalie Portman. They sang the song a capella to their front-facing cameras in various settings, with no professional production involved. The video got over 4.2 million views on its first day, but it was instantly ridiculed on all platforms.

Critics complained that Gadot and the other stars were centering themselves in this historic global crisis out of apparent vanity, and in an effort to stay relevant. At the time, people everywhere were losing their jobs, so people also noted that the celebrities could have made a bigger difference by making donations and promoting charitable causes rather than singing unprompted.

Gadot weathered the mockery all year, and even poked fun at the video herself in October. At the time, she accepted an award at Elle‘s Women in Hollywood event, and she jokingly sang a few bars from “Imagine” during her acceptance speech.

Gadot will be back in theaters this month in one of the longest-delayed movies of the COVID-19 pandemic – Death on the Nile. The adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel was originally supposed to premiere in December of 2019, so it has been finished for years. It also stars Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Ali Fazal, Dawn French, Armie Hammer, Rose Leslie, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo, Jennifer Saunders, Letitia Wright and Kenneth Branagh, who also directed it. Fans can finally see it for themselves on Friday, Feb. 11, 2022, only in theaters.