Gal Gadot has admitted she acted in "poor taste" after posting a video of herself and several other celebrities singing the 1971 hit "Imagine" in March 2020 as a response to the start of the lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The actress made the remarks during an interview for the cover story of InStyle's February issue, when journalist Laura Brown mentioned that Gadot began self mockingly singing "Imagine" in October 2021 after walking up to the podium to accept her award at Elle's 2021 Women in Hollywood event.
"It just felt right, and I don't take myself too seriously. And with the whole 'Imagine' controversy, it's funny," Gadot said.
The video in question features the actress along with "Wonder Woman 1984" co-star Kristen Wiig, and Natalie Portman, Zoë Kravitz, Amy Adams, Maya Rudolph, Mark Ruffalo, and Will Ferrell, among others, singing the song. What ensued was backlash and, as Gadot pointed out, the video was ultimately "branded as tone deaf."
"I was calling Kristen [Wiig] and I was like, 'Listen, I want to do this thing,'" she explained. "The pandemic was in Europe and Israel before it came here [to the U.S.] in the same way. I was seeing where everything was headed. But [the video] was premature. It wasn't the right timing, and it wasn't the right thing. It was in poor taste. All pure intentions, but sometimes you don't hit the bull's-eye, right?"
Gadot also addressed the video in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2020, saying that she started the project as a "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 said, later adding, "I meant to do something good and pure, and it didn’t transcend."