Joss Whedon, Gal Gadot understands you just fine — and so do I

Bilingual English speakers like me don’t appreciate being told that we didn’t know we were being insulted because we ‘just misunderstood’

(Getty Images)

I have to hand it to Joss Whedon: he keeps it fresh. In these pandemic times, when days have a tendency to get repetitive, you can count on him to break the monotony. I will admit that his latest take – “bilingual people are silly little bunnies”, though I’m paraphrasing – isn’t one I expected to read.

His remarks were published on Monday by Vulture, as part of a wide-ranging profile of Whedon focusing on his recent fall from grace. Whedon, once the heralded creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has faced allegations of workplace harassment in the past couple of years. In July 2020, actor Ray Fisher, who starred in the 2017 Justice League (on which Whedon handled post-production duties after the film’s original director, Zack Snyder, had to step down), accused Whedon of having treated the cast and crew in a “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” manner. And in September that year, Jason Momoa supported Fisher’s claims in an Instagram post mentioning “the sh*tty way we were treated on Justice League reshoots” and stating that “serious stuff went down”. WarnerMedia, the film’s distributor, released a statement in December saying an investigation had taken place and “remedial action” had been taken.

Gal Gadot, who portrays Wonder Woman in the DC Universe, including in Justice League, began sharing her accounts of working with Whedon in April 2021. That month, The Hollywood Reporter cited a “knowledgeable source” saying that Gadot had “multiple concerns” with Whedon’s portrayal of her character in reshoots for Justice League.

“The biggest clash,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote, citing “sources”, “came when Whedon pushed Gadot to record lines she didn’t like, threatened to harm Gadot’s career and disparaged Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins.” A “witness on the production” told the publication that on one occasion, “Joss was bragging that he’s had it out with Gal. He told her he’s the writer and she’s going to shut up and say the lines and he can make her look incredibly stupid in this movie.” Gadot told The Hollywood Reporter in a brief statement: “I had my issues with [Whedon] and Warner Bros handled it in a timely manner.”

She shared more the following month, when she said in an interview with the Israeli news outlet N12 that Whedon said “if I did something, he would make sure my career was miserable and I just took care of it immediately”. Gadot later told Elle: “Oh, I was shaking trees as soon as it happened. And I must say that the heads of Warner Brothers, they took care of it.... You’re dizzy because you can’t believe this was just said to you. And if he says it to me, then obviously he says it to many other people. I just did what I felt like I had to do. And it was to tell people that it’s not okay.”

Whedon denied all wrongdoing in his new interview with Vulture. “I don’t threaten people,” he told the publication. “Who does that?” He could have stopped there, but he chose instead to step on the slippery slope of Gadot’s status as a bilingual person.

Gadot’s first language is Hebrew (she was born in Petah Tikva, Israel). As she once told GQ, she started learning English in third grade, and increased her efforts once she realized she wanted to watch American TV shows like Friends and Seinfeld. Nowadays, she’s completely fluent in English and speaks with a slight accent.

Whedon brought up Gadot’s bilingualism in his conversation with Vulture, suggesting that she had mistakenly thought he had threatened her because of some sort of language barrier. “English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech,” he said. Whedon, Vulture wrote, “recalled arguing over a scene she wanted to cut” and telling Gadot “jokingly that if she wanted to get rid of it, she would have to tie him to a railroad track and do it over his dead body”. “Then I was told that I had said something about her dead body and tying her to the railroad track,” he added. Gadot told Vulture in an email she “understood perfectly” what Whedon had been saying.

There is something so offensive in Whedon’s suggestion that Gadot misinterpreted something akin to innocent ribbing because English isn’t her first language. As a native French speaker who — like Gadot and thousands of foreign kids around the world — learned English by watching American TV, I of course didn’t take it personally whatsoever.

At the time Gadot and Whedon worked on the same set for the Justice League reshoots, Gadot was 32 years old. She would have had more than 20 years of English practice under her belt. She spoke English well enough to be one of a handful of globally famous actors who weren’t born speaking the language. Not only do I have no doubt that her proficiency was impeccable, but also, really, Joss Whedon? You’re going to doubt the skills – and, to a degree, the intelligence – of the person in the room who had to master a whole new language to even be here in the first place? Bold move.

Whedon’s comments seem especially tone-deaf when you consider that Gadot herself has said in the past that she used to feel insecure about her accent.“I fought my accent for so long,” she told GQ in November 2017. “Like, I gotta sound more American. I was a little bit shy about my accent. Until I let it go. My dialect coach told me, ‘Just own your accent. As long as you’re clear and understood, own it.’ And since I’ve started to own it, I feel free.”

By the time you’ve studied a language long enough to attain a level of proficiency similar to Gadot’s, you know it intimately. You’ve listened to hours of tape, sat through hours of grammar quizzes. You know the language’s quirks, its music, its poetry. You know how different people around the world speak it. You understand tone. You know when people are being kind and when they’re being “flowery”.

Whedon is wrong to worry about being misunderstood. We understand what he’s saying just fine.