The former pageant winner admitted on ‘Hot Ones’ that the only part of Miss Israel she enjoyed was “the opening sequence with the dance”
Gal Gadot made her Hot Ones debut where she discussed performing her own stunts and winning beauty pageants all while eating increasingly spicy chicken wings.
During an appearance on the season 21 finale of the popular YouTube series, released on Wednesday, the actress — who stars as superhero Wonder Woman in the titular franchise — joined host Sean Evans to tackle tasty chicken wings slathered in fiery flavors while discussing her box office glories in the Fast & Furious franchise and her upcoming Netflix spy thriller Heart of Stone.
She told Evans, 37, she prepared to taste the spicy flavors.
“Just so you know, I got some tips from friends,” she said as they began eating the zesty chicken wings. “Try not to let it touch the lips.”
Gadot, 38, told Evans she got advice from Alia Bhatt, her fellow Heart of Stone cast member, and someone who travels “around the world with like a bottle of spicy sauce.”
“She said, ‘Breathe like this,’ ” Gadot said while pursing her lips while blowing out, which Evans then copied. “Just like that!”
The 2004 Miss Israel titleholder also opened up about her time as a pageant queen.
“When I went to Miss Israel in Israel, to begin with, I went for the experience and so I could tell my grandkids that grandma — and then I won and that was shocking,” Gadot told Evans between progressively heated mouthfuls. “I never meant to win, I came for fun, and all of a sudden — it’s funny, you’re 18, you’re not taking things very seriously. The only part that I enjoyed doing was the opening sequence with the dance.”
Acting was not something Gadot imagined herself doing before competing in Miss Israel.
“I never thought about becoming an actress and the opportunity kind of came my way,” she shared in a 2017 Sunday Today interview with Willie Geist. “I started to become more curious about it, and then I fell in love with the profession — but it wasn’t like I was growing up dreaming of becoming an actress.”
Gadot admitted that she considered going back to law school to support her family rather than deal with more rejection in Hollywood.
When asked how close she actually came to quitting, Gadot replied, “I was as close as it gets.”
Following her brief pageant career, at age 20, Gadot shifted focus to the Israel Defense Forces as part of her mandatory two years of national military service, where she was a combat fitness instructor. That early training helped her when it came to performing her own cinematic stunts in her action-packed roles, particularly in the DC Extended Universe.
“I must say that when I was watching the second Wonder Woman and it starts with the sequence of young Wonder Woman fighting — I got so emotional, it was like me being an 8-year-old girl watching an amazing girl doing amazing things. That was emotionally effective on me,” Gadot told Evans after he asked her about what fight sequence surprised her the most while watching it on the silver screen.
Gadot, who shares three daughters — Alma, 11, Maya, 6, and Daniella, 2 — with her real estate developer husband Jaron Varsano, will star in the Netflix crime thriller, Heart of Stone, alongside Jamie Dornan. She plays intelligence agent Rachel Stone who is recruited by a shadowy corporation to protect a mysterious and dangerous device.
The movie was filmed prior to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes that have currently forced Hollywood to shutter.
“I feel like from one movie to the next, the bar keeps going up and up,” she said. “At the same time, I didn’t want this to be another Wonder Woman film so the whole idea was to create a film that would be grounded and the action would be raw and dynamic. When [my character] gets the hit, you feel the pain with her so it’s a lot different. We had to work out and train and prep for months before even filming this film.”
Watch Heart of Stone on Netflix on Aug. 11.
