Filmmaker Joss Whedon says that Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot may have misunderstood him during an argument on the set of 2017's Justice League, after Gadot and other actors have accused him of bullying and threats.
'English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech,' Whedon, 57, said in an interview with Vulture published Monday.
The director, who created the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and wrote the smash hit Toy Story, said Gadot misheard a joke that if she wanted to get rid of a scene, she'd have to tie him down 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, 36, responded to Whedon's theory by saying: 'I understood perfectly.'
Last year, the Israel-born actress said that Whedon had 'threatened' her career and told her that he'd make sure it would be 'miserable.'
This came after other actors, including fellow Justice League star Ray Fisher and actresses Charisma Carpenter and Michelle Trachtenberg from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, came forward with their own claims of misconduct by Whedon.
Filmmaker and showrunner Joss Whedon, above in 2019, told Vulture that Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot may have misunderstood him on set because 'English is not her first language'
Gadot, 36, responded to Whedon's theory by saying: 'I understood perfectly'
Last year, the Israeli-born actress said Whedon 'threatened' her career and told her that he'd make sure it would be 'miserable.' Above, the Justice League cast in London in November 2017
'He threatened my career and told me that if I did something, he'll make sure my career will be miserable and I just took care of it on the spot,' Gadot said in May, as translated by the Twitter account Discussing Film.
Whedon allegedly threatened Gal Gadot's career and said he could 'make her look incredibly stupid' on the set of Justice League according to The Hollywood Reporter article and backed up by N12.
A source told the Hollywood Reporter that Gadot had 'multiple concerns with the revised version of the film, including issues about her character being more aggressive than her character in Wonder Woman.'
'She wanted to make the character flow from one movie to the next,' the source said.
An unnamed actress on Angel, another one of Whedon's shows, told Vulture that Gadot's story sounded familiar. She said that when her agent pushed for her to get a raise, Whedon called her at home and said she was 'never going to work for him, or 20th Century Fox, again.'
'Wow, he's still using that line,' she reportedly said when she read Gadot's quote.
Whedon wrote Justice League and took over as director in 2016, overseeing 40 days of reshoots after Zack Snyder stepped down following the suicide of his 20-year-old daughter
Justice League actor Ray Fisher called Whedon's on-set treatment of the cast and crew 'gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable' in 2020
Whedon's behavior triggered an investigation from the studio. WarnerMedia said it looked into Fisher's complaints had concluded and 'remedial action' had been taken
Gadot first hinted that something was amiss on the set of Justice League in a December 2020 interview with the LA Times, in which she said her experience working with Whedon 'wasn't the best one.'
'But I took care of it there and when it happened,' she said. 'I took it to the higher-ups and they took care of it.'
The film was thrown into disarray in 2016 after director Zack Snyder stepped down following the suicide of his 20-year-old daughter Autumn Snyder.
Whedon, who wrote the film, took over as director and oversaw 40 days of reshoots, but the directors' visions never aligned correctly, with Vulture claiming that Snyder's god-like version of superheroes clashed with Whedon's
