Zack Snyder Didn’t Know Gal Gadot Was Going to Improvise This ‘Batman V Superman’ Scene
Gal Gadot was the first actor in years to portray a live-action Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder’s Batman V Superman.
But at times Gadot decided to leave her own mark on the character, which led to an unexpected improvised scene.
Gal Gadot became Wonder Woman after she managed to hold her own with Ben Affleck
Before becoming the female superhero, Gadot had no idea she was auditioning for Wonder Woman in the first place. On Variety’s Actors on Actors, Gadot explained to fellow actor Kumail Nanjiani that all she knew was she was auditioning for something secret.
“One week before I did the camera test with Ben [Affleck], I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ They told me they wanted to fly me to L.A. I was like, ‘Great. But what is it,'” she said.
She was later told she was being tested for the character of Wonder Woman. According to filmmaker Zack Snyder, it was Gadot’s screen test with Ben Affleck’s Batman that scored her the role.
“We tested a bunch of actresses, as you can imagine. But the thing with Gal is that she’s strong, she’s beautiful, and she’s a kind person, which is interesting, but fierce at the same time. It’s that combination of being fierce but kind at the same time that we were looking for,” Snyder once told FilmInk. “She can get serious, but she’s amazingly fun to be around. And by the way, she really held her own with Ben in the screen test. Ben was like, ‘Whoa, that girl is something else!'”
Zack Snyder didn’t know Gal Gadot was going to improvise this ‘Batman V. Superman’ scene
Gadot was interested in putting her own creative spin on the character beyond what might have been scripted. For her, it was important to present both Wonder Woman’s selfless heroism and her lust for battle. Some of the ways she did this was by improvising.
During Wonder Woman’s fight with Doomsday in Batman V. Superman, Gadot smiles when Doomsday briefly gains the upper-hand. It was an unscripted moment that Gadot felt would speak volumes about her character.
“For me, it was important that people can relate to her. Being all that, I wanted her not to be too, ah, ‘goody two shoes.’ I wanted her to have this attitude. I wanted her to have a smirk when she fights Doomsday. I didn’t want her to be too polished. I wanted to make her a little bit darker, a little bit dirtier,” she said in an interview with the LA Times.
Snyder was caught off guard by Gadot’s improvisation in the movie, and wondered where the smile came from.
“I remember after we did that take, Zack came to me and he said, ‘Did you just have a smirk?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ And he asked, ‘Why? I think I like it, but why?’ ‘Well if he’s gonna mess with her, then she’s gonna mess with him. And she knows she’s gonna win.’ At the end of the day Wonder Woman is a peace seeker. But when fight arrives, she can fight. She’s a warrior and she enjoys the adrenaline of the fight,” Gadot said.
Gal Gadot considered leaving Hollywood before being cast as Wonder Woman
Gadot was having a difficult time in Hollywood before Snyder recruited her for the DC Extended Universe. She’d auditioned to other big-budget projects prior, but the constant rejections were beginning to take a toll on her.
“Before I got Wonder Woman, I was thinking about never coming back to Los Angeles, [I thought I’d] stay in Israel, work as an actress here and there, go back to university and do something else. Because there had been so many no’s,” Gadot said in a 2017 interview with Glamour.
Gadot was also raising a family at the time, and it seemed better for her family’s sake to leave Hollywood for a while. Fortunately for her, however, Wonder Woman gave her a second chance.
“My husband has a lot of work in Tel Aviv, and we had a daughter, so taking them to LA to fish for work put a lot of pressure on me. I was like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ Hearing no, over and over, I was thinking, ‘What am I good for?’ And that’s when I got Wonder Woman,” Gadot said.
