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Israeli actress Gal Gadot – best known, of course, for playing Wonder Woman in the hit film series – is behind a new National Geographic television documentary series which shines the spotlight on the stories of women who have had an extraordinary influence on their local communities.
Insight with Gal Gadot, which she hosts and executive produces, is being broadcast as six 12-minute short documentaries released weekly on National Geographic’s YouTube channel, and as a two-hour feature special to screen on Disney+ in June.
Originally planned to be international in content, the Covid pandemic has meant it had to be Americas set. The strands range from women in California using surfing as a means of dealing with bereavement, to ice-skating teenage poets helping underprivileged children in Michigan. The original version of the series featured an Egyptian woman as one of its subjects, and Gadot has been reported as saying she wouldn’t rule out a visit to the Middle East for season two.
Gadot is an American-Israeli citizen and often regarded as a polarising figure in the Middle East, with Wonder Woman even being banned in Lebanon on its release in 2017, owing to the actress serving with the Israeli army.
“The story of the Egyptian woman, that was incredible, and I would love to tell an Arab story for sure,” Gadot has been quoted as saying. “There’s endless stories to tell,” Gadot said added National Geographic’s CTAM Winter 2021 Tour panel recently. “With all these women, what we can see is [that] all of them come from difficult circumstances.”
