Gadot is the second Israeli to grace the cover of the magazine, following Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman.In the cover story, which was just released on Vanity Fair’s website, Gadot poses on the Caesarea beach in designer clothes, including outfits by Chanel, Givenchy, Miu Miu and Proenza Schouler. She was interviewed on Zoom by Nancy Jo Sales, because of the pandemic.Her Wonder Woman director, Patty Jenkins, and several of her costars in several films, including Chris Pine and Annette Bening, gush over her talent, beauty, great personality and versatility. Gadot talks about how she feels lucky to have achieved her current level of international success and also maintain a stable family life with her supportive husband, Jaron Varsano, and her two daughters.The magazine went to press before the current controversy about whether a white Israeli actress should play Cleopatra, but she addresses the much-criticized “Imagine” video she made with other celebrities to encourage people during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, which was pilloried for its off-key singing and what many called its tone-deaf and patronizing air.“Sometimes, you know, you try and do a good deed and it’s just not the right good deed... I had nothing but good intentions and it came from the best place, and I just wanted to send light and love to the world,” she says, adding that her Wonder Woman 1984 costar Kristen Wiig “brought a bunch of people to the game. But yeah, I started it, and I can only say that I meant to do something good and pure, and it didn’t transcend.”Gadot said that her straightforward attitude has caused problems for her in Hollywood, where deviousness tends to be widespread: “Sometimes it can get me in trouble. There is something that I’ve learned to say, which is, ‘I don’t disagree with you, but’ – so basically I’m disagreeing with you... So I adapted. I just came to the conclusion: I do me, you do you. I’d rather have you not liking me at this moment than not saying my truth.”
She waxes philosophical about the changes caused by the pandemic, including the delay of the release of her latest Wonder Woman film, and also becomes serious when discussing the recent gang-rape in Eilat in August, telling Sales about “a horrible thing that happened to a 16-year-old girl that got raped by multiple men in Israel... How come there were multiple men in the room, and no one was like, Hey guys, this is wrong, stop, somebody call the police?... We have to role-model ourselves to our children and we have to educate them for equality.”Perhaps it’s no coincidence that she claims she deliberately tried to lose the Miss Universe pageant in 2004, where she felt ill at ease, saying that she told the judges, “‘Me no speak English, so sorry.’ I did everything to make sure it wasn’t gonna happen.”She concludes by describing how she likes to express gratitude in a traditionally Jewish way, inspired by prayer: “I say thank you every morning. In the Jewish culture there’s a prayer that you’re supposed to say every time you wake up in the morning to thank God for, you know, keeping you alive and dadadada.You say ‘modeh ani,’ which means ‘I give thanks,’... So every morning I wake up and step out of bed and I say, ‘Thank you for everything, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.’... Nothing is to be taken for granted.”