Unless you've been quarantining under a rock, you've probably seen THAT Gal Gadot video, in which many celebrities joined together from their mansions to sing John Lennon's "Imagine." The goal, apparently, was to cheer people up in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The video was met with lots of backlash, with many people saying it was a tone-deaf response that showed how out-of-touch celebrities can be about this crisis.
No politician can unify people in the way that the “Imagine” video seems to have united every single person against it.
Well, one of the video's celebrity participants, Jamie Dornan, is now speaking out about it. He says he knew it was potentially going to be controversial, but agreed to do it anyway because Kristen Wiig asked him to.
"It's a funny thing, not being on social media, I wasn't really that aware of the negative reaction to it," he said in an interview on Shane Todd's podcast, Tea With Me. "But I was made aware quite quickly by some mates."
Gal Gadot, Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Pedro Pascal, Kristen Wiig, Jamie Dornan, Will Ferrell and Jimmy Fallon after posting that video of them singing “Imagine” off-key
"Gal [Gadot], who organized it, she organized it with Kristen Wiig. Kristen and I had done a movie together last summer...and we just got along brilliantly. Um, I'd do anything for her."
And according to Jamie, it was Kristen — not Gal — who texted him asking if he'd participate:
So Kristen texted me, uh, whatever, two days before that came out, saying..."Listen, my friend Gal and I are trying to organize this thing to try to lift people's spirits...We basically just want you to sing a line of 'Imagine.'"
"I was like, yeah, fine. Whatever," Jamie recalled. "Of course I'll do that. Seems like a lovely thing to do."
Jamie said the process of filming his segment took "two seconds," and that he was mostly just focused on getting his kids to be quiet so he could record his line. He also said he was a bit confused about what the tone of the video was supposed to be — whether it was serious or a joke.
"And then [I] send it to Kristen. ... This is great. This is gonna be great," he said. "Whatever happens, happens."
Jamie says he learned about the resulting controversy through Kristen, when she texted him an apology days later:
And Kristen texts me a couple days later going, "Sorry." I was like "What do you mean?" And, um, she said, "Well, there's been a lot of negative stuff...we were just trying to do a nice thing."
Jamie said his friend then called him to make fun of him for being "pompous" enough to do the video. He added that he still hasn't looked online to see what critics are saying about it.
me seeing some of my fave celebrities singing in the gal gadot video
But Jamie did mention that he had a gut feeling about how the video might be received, which is why he decided to film his line in the bathroom instead of somewhere more glamorous:
I’ll tell you what the problem was. I literally did mine in the toilet of my house. … Quite clearly, [some of the celebrities] had escaped to their second home. There’s too much acreage in the background, I felt. You know, too many beautiful swaying trees, clearly by an ocean, that sort of crap. I was quite aware of that when I was doing it — I was just like, make it normal.
"[Gal] was trying to do a good and kind thing," Jamie concluded. "I just got dragged along with it. But, listen, you know, what am I gonna do?"
