Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

‘English is not her first language’: Joss Whedon claims Gal Gadot’s accusations were a misunderstanding

(JTA) — Joss Whedon, the director and showrunner who has been criticized by multiple actresses for his behavior on movie sets, shot back at Gal Gadot in an interview with Vulture published Monday over accusations she made last year that Whedon had made threats about her career.

In May 2021, Gadot told Israel’s News12 that Whedon had threatened her career on the set of “Justice League,” which was released in 2017. Gadot said Whedon told her “if I did something, he would make my career miserable,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Someone who witnessed the interaction between Gadot and Whedon later said: “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.”

Whedon, who has been accused by others of abusive behavior on set, said in the Vulture interview that Gadot, who is Israeli, had misunderstood him.

“I don’t threaten people. Who does that?” he told Vulture.

He added: “English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech.”

Joss Whedon at the premiere of “Ant-Man And The Wasp” in Los Angeles, June 25, 2018. (Christopher Polk/Getty Images)

He said he instead intended to joke with Gadot:

He recalled arguing over a scene she wanted to cut. He told her 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 said. (Gadot did not agree with Whedon’s version of events. “I understood perfectly,” she told New York in an email.)

Whedon has written or directed several Marvel films and other popular sci-fi and superhero films such as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Serenity.”


The post ‘English is not her first language’: Joss Whedon claims Gal Gadot’s accusations were a misunderstanding appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.