Another day, another triumph for Gal Gadot.
If you’ve read her profile in GQ, published yesterday, you know that despite being universally loved and cosmically admired and globally adored, she somehow managed to make herself even more endearing, coming off as boundlessly warm and impossibly cool, smart and funny and gracious. You should definitely cherish every word of Caity Weaver’s terrific piece, but until you have the time to indulge in the full Gadot, here are the top five moments, ranked in ascending order of Gal Gadot-iness:
She brought her interviewer an egg sandwich…:
Wonder Woman has brought me the egg sandwich wrapped in cellophane, and when she arrives, she delivers it to me as confidently as if I had specifically requested it. She also packed me a fluffy white bath towel from her own home. Wonder Woman is used to taking care of everything because she is the protector of mankind.
…And, hours later, fretted about her interviewer not eating it:
“Tell me what you like to eat,” she purrs, breaking the calm quiet of passing swells. Then she springs her observation trap: “BECAUSE I NOTICE YOU DID NOT EAT THE EGG SANDWICH THAT I BROUGHT YOU.”
She quotes a classic Israeli idiom (that started out as an advertising slogan for bras):
In speech, she sometimes translates Hebrew idioms into English ones that don’t exist, which gives her conversation a poetic flair. (Her description of acting: “It’s going with but feeling without. Do you have this term?” We should.)
She has her own ideas about Cheers:
“It’s like your Cheers,” I tell her. Everybody here does know her name.
She bursts out laughing and corrects me: “It’s L’Chaim!”
And she knows the precise way to pronounce the name of the High Priest:
One of the top five best sounds on Earth is Gal Gadot saying “Leonard Cohen,” which she says like this: leh-ow-hu-narhd cuh’wen.
Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.
