Gal Gadot and Sacha Baron Cohen, two of the highest-profile Jewish stars in Hollywood, both grace the covers of magazines this week, Gadot and Baron Cohen in designer duds on the fashion magazine W, while Baron Cohen also appears on the cover of Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue.
The Best Performances and Hollywood issues traditionally run at this time of year ahead of the Oscars ceremony, which normally takes place in February or early March but has this year been pushed back to late April.
Gadot and Baron Cohen are two of nine stars who appear on different W covers as part of its “Best Performances” issue. Asked about her latest movie, Wonder Woman 1984, which was released in late December after many pandemic-related delays, Gadot talked about the challenges of the flying stunts. But those were easy for the extremely fit star, who served in the Israel Defense Forces as a combat fitness instructor, compared to her latest lockdown hobby: cooking.
“We actually bought a bread-making machine! I started spending way too much time in the kitchen. And I started having terrible accidents. I burned myself very badly, and cut my finger making a cabbage salad. So I’m now keeping away from the kitchen,” she told W.
In her cover photo, Gadot rocks a lace and black-sequin minidress with extremely high heels that only Wonder Woman could walk in.
Baron Cohen, wearing a tailored suit that would be far too conservative for both his alter-ego, the loud and clueless Borat in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and Abbie Hoffman, the 60s radical he portrayed in Aaron Sorkin’s Netflix movie, The Trial of the Chicago 7, talked seriously about politics with W. He said he had been happy to work on a drama about Jewish activists: “I became interested in Hoffman when I was at Cambridge writing my undergraduate thesis on the Jewish radicals who fought racial injustice in America,” he said.
He also mentioned that he penned the catchy, “Wuhan Flu” song from the Borat movie with his brother, Erran Baron Cohen.
In the Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair, Baron Cohen continues his political engagement as he takes part in the magazine’s annual fantasy film by symbolically cleaning up the Oval Office at the White House, as he vacuums dressed in a tuxedo with a green jacket.
In his Vanity Fair interview, he said that he had hoped his Borat sequel would influence the US presidential election and that he feels it did: “Probably the most successful element of it was that it discredited [Trump lawyer] Rudy Giuliani.”
Baron Cohen shares the cover with Charlize Theron, Michael B. Jordan and Zendaya. Other Jewish actors in the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue are Dan Levy and Maya Rudolph.