A Challenging Wonder Woman Scene Gave Gal Gadot And Kristen Wiig A Nasty Rash
In Patty Jenkins' bonkers superhero flick "Wonder Woman 1984," various characters have access to a magical wish-granting stone that is causing havoc in the world. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) wishes her deceased beloved Trevor (Chris Pine) to be resurrected, but he has to occupy another person's body in order to live. The evil villain Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) wishes that he becomes the wishing stone, giving him wish-granting powers. Wonder Woman's mousy co-worker Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) first wishes to be more like Wonder Woman, but eventually goes a little power mad and angry when that wish is granted. Later, Barbara wishes to become an "apex predator," transforming herself into a were-cheetah. During the film's climax, the cheetah version of Barbara and Wonder Woman — dressed like a golden angel — will do battle on the shores of a rocky, remote island. There are concrete slabs, power lines, catwalks, and the usual accouterments of all generic action climaxes.
The fight sees the two combatants flinging each other into walls, swinging by electrical wires, and eventually falling into the ocean where the struggle continues. When Barbara refuses to renounce her wish, determined to kill the superheroine, Wonder Woman grabs a live cable and electrocutes her. Audiences learn that power, when it is undergirded by envy, corrupts.
It seems that shooting the final fight was a massive headache for Gadot and Wiig. The pair were interviewed by Bazaar Magazine in 2020, and they shared how difficult a $200 million production like "Wonder Woman 1984" is. It seems that playing superheroines and supervillainesses is physically exhausting, especially when one has to jump into water and thrash around in monster makeup. It gets worse when there's milk in the water.
Wonder Woman vs. Stinky Milk Water
Gadot adopted a handy survival strategy: take a $200 million production one day at a time. These types of movies are massively complicated affairs, and Gadot found that it's easiest to take it as it comes. Even so, when you're diving into milk water, you're having a bad day at work. Gadot said:
"In these type of huge movies, you can't take it as a whole. It's day by day. It's not even a week-by-week project because every day is full to the max. Do you remember the water work we had to do and the rashes that came out over our faces? Then they had to put milk in it and it just stank. People see the final, polished thing, but we had to do diving and you [Kristen] were cold."
The fight in "Wonder Woman 1984" was shot indoors, using a massive water take for the performers to splash around in. The milk Gadot refers to was likely used to make the studio's tank look more like proper seawater, adding natural cloudiness. Milk, of course, spoils and starts to smell. Gadot revealed that both she and Wiig were irritated by the liquids. Wiig added that she was already under the weather when filming began, and getting repeatedly into a cold tank of milk water didn't help matters. Wiig said:
"I had to make sure I didn't go down too far because of my sinuses. I had a really bad cold, and it happened to be the day we were shooting under water and scuba diving."
Let it never be said that actors in giant blockbusters have a cushy job. Sometimes you have to worry about your nose running into a sea of milk.