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Israeli Wonder Woman Gal Gadot Just Gave Birth to Her Second Child. How Does She Do It All?

The only thing it seems she can’t do is get the studio to finally release her movie

by
Rachel Shukert
March 21, 2017
Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Israeli actress Gal Gadot poses for a photograph after arriving to attend the European Premiere of the film 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice', in central London on March 22, 2016. Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Israeli actress Gal Gadot poses for a photograph after arriving to attend the European Premiere of the film 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice', in central London on March 22, 2016. Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Mazel tov to Gal Gadot, the Israeli actress and star of the upcoming film Wonder Woman, who gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Maya, this week. We at Tablet, with our contractual obligation to breathlessly cover the gestational periods of every Jewish (or even Jew-ish) movie star, are extremely happy for her, and I’m sure that even two days postpartum, she looks better in an evening gown than anyone else on the planet. (Her pregnant appearance at the Golden Globes in a slinky cut-out black gown put us all to shame, as I imagine it was meant to.) So good for Gal, and her growing family!

Which leads me, however indirectly, to my next point: how the hell has the previously unknown Gal Gadot managed to break into the American market, make several talk show appearances (in which she displayed a refreshingly sabra sense of candor in her refusal to be effectively leered at by various male hosts), make a major red-carpet splash at the second-biggest awards show of the year, and gestated and given birth to an entire human being—all while Wonder Woman still isn’t coming out for almost another three months?

Doesn’t it seem like we first heard tell of the DC Universe’s first female-helmed and female-driven action movie about a decade ago, when we were still young and were about to have a female president to go along with our new female superhero? And yes, I know that Gadot’s Wonder Woman, a.k.a. Diana Prince, technically debuted exactly a year ago in the critically-panned but box-office-busting Batman vs. Superman, which had a similarly long lead time (I think I remember reading a headline about the controversial choice of Ben Affleck as Batman alongside something about how man had finally mastered commercial jet travel) but still—doesn’t that seem like an eternity ago too? Will we one day finally succeed in making daily life seem so unbearable that we will all feel like Amazonian immortals with a magic invisible lasso in which to ensnare our enemies? Will we even bother anymore?

I don’t have the answers to any of this. The only thing that we can know, beyond the shadow of doubt, is that unless you have an elephant pregnancy like Katie Holmes (she was pregnant with Suri for about three years, and that is an undisputed fact), it is that the human gestational process moves at a lightning speed compared to the Hollywood development one. As for Gadot, her new baby might be ready for college—or at least, sleeping through the night—by the time her big movie finally comes out. That’s a wonder indeed.

Rachel Shukert is the author of the memoirs Have You No Shame? and Everything Is Going To Be Great,and the novel Starstruck. She is the creator of the Netflix show The Baby-Sitters Club, and a writer on such series as GLOW and Supergirl. Her Twitter feed is @rachelshukert.