Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

WATCH: Gal Gadot tries eggnog; Jimmy Fallon gags at gefilte fish

On the fifth night of Hanukkah, Jimmy Fallon and Gal Gadot, in the spirit of interfaith exchange, foisted two seasonal acquired tastes on one another — we pity their palates.

In this installment of the popular internet genre of “let’s watch this person eat some foreign food,” the “Wonder Woman 1984” star was given a tasting menu of American treats on Fallon’s “Tonight Show.” It began with some eggnog.

“Is it safe to drink?” Gadot asked, fearing that the egg involved might not have been pasteurized. The salmonella concerns are real. But it made us wonder if she’s had similar confusion about an egg cream. Has Gal Gadot had an egg cream?

She L’Chaimed as she swigged the virgin version of this Christmas staple and her eyes immediately narrowed. She wasn’t a fan. A bigger hit was the Taco Bell chalupa of unspecified filling.

Fallon, for his part, partook in sufganiyot, which he had trouble pronouncing. This seemed like an unfair swap. Jelly doughnuts aren’t divisive — eggnog certainly is.

But we had no reason to fear, as Gadot furnished Fallon with a jar of gefilte fish, proving that revenge is a dish best served cold — or possibly at room temperature.

While we would have appreciated a bit more sensitivity from Fallon, who behaved like a contestant on “Fear Factor,” even hoisting a trash can on his desk for easy spitting, we were pleasantly surprised by his response.

Yet we can’t help but hope that something was left on the cutting room floor here. Making the pivot from eggnog to Ho-Hos to Taco Bell can’t constitute a pleasant bouquet of flavors. As for Fallon, the pivot to jelly doughnut to jellied fish is certainly a hard one.

All things being equal, Fallon may have had it worse here. Good on Gadot for not going the safe route by giving him latkes.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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 credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link 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.