The actress, now headlining the Netflix spy thriller ‘Heart of Stone,’ stars with Rachel Zegler in the live-action take on the Disney classic, out next year
Gal Gadot’s eldest daughter had a sassy response when she learned her mom would play the Evil Queen in Snow White, the upcoming live-action take on the Disney classic.
In the new issue of PEOPLE, Gadot, who shares daughters Alma, 11, Maya 6, and Daniella, 2, with her husband, entrepreneur Jaron Varsano, 48, says her girls are “very excited” to see her in the movie. “They can’t wait.”
“My middle child was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t Snow White,” continues Gadot (who spoke to PEOPLE in June before the actors’ strike). “When I told them I’m going to shoot Snow White for [a] month, she was convinced that I’m going to play Snow White. But when I told her ‘No, it’s the evil queen,’ my oldest said, ‘Oh, how appropriate.’”
Gal Gadot and family
Gadot previously opened up about filming the movie in a July cover story with Vogue Hong Kong. “I think it was so much fun to play the Evil Queen,” she said.
“There was something so delicious with this part because it’s a fairy tale. It’s the first Disney villain,” she told the outlet. “And because it’s a musical, I could stretch my performance and make it so much more dramatic and so much more animated, that it was just simply delightful.”
At last year’s D23 Expo, the actress told PEOPLE about how she and Zegler were working together and “modernizing” the animated classic, which premiered in 1937.
“I wanted to make sure that we keep her delightful and delicious, and we understand what makes her tick. Then the evilness is interesting, and not just flat,” said Gadot.
“For me, it was making sure the Queen is not just evil for the sake of being evil. There is a complexity. Between the two characters, it’s like a mother-daughter relationship in a weird way,” continued Gadot. “It’s what happens to a woman when she feels like she’s not relevant anymore, what can come out of her.”
And though their characters may clash on screen, Gadot and Zegler got along famously when the cameras stopped rolling.
“We danced a lot, and we laughed a lot. And we just, at the end of the day, we’re not the type of, neither of us is the type of actor that, when it’s cut, we just go to our trailers,” Gadot said. “It was just a wonderful, commune type of atmosphere on set. When you have this good chemistry between everybody, it really shows on screen.”
Gadot is now starring as a highly-trained intelligence agent in the new Netflix spy thriller Heart of Stone, and she had a similar connection to costar Jamie Dornan.
“We kind of hit it right from the get-go,” Gadot tells PEOPLE.
Heart of Stone streams on Netflix Friday, Aug. 11.
