Lynda Carter Calls James Cameron a "Poor Soul" for Sexist Wonder Woman Comments

See what the actress had to say about the director's words

By Jess Cohen Sep 28, 2017 11:48 PMTags

Lynda Carter has a message for James Cameron: Stop dissing Wonder Woman.

The director has continuously made sexist comments about the 2017 film starring Gal Gadot as hero Diana for months. Now Carter, who originally played Diana in the TV series Wonder Woman from 1975 to 1979, is responding to Cameron's comments.

"To James Cameron -STOP dissing WW: You poor soul," Carter writes in a Facebook message posted on Thursday. "Perhaps you do not understand the character. I most certainly do. Like all women--we are more than the sum of our parts."

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Carter continues, "Your thuggish jabs at a brilliant director, Patty Jenkins, are ill advised. This movie was spot on. Gal Gadot was great. I know, Mr. Cameron--I have embodied this character for more than 40 years. So--STOP IT."

Back in August, Cameron made his first comments about the movie and said why it didn't impress him. "All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood's been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided. She's an objectified icon, and it's just male Hollywood doing the same old thing," Cameron told The Guardian. "I'm not saying I didn't like the movie but, to me, it's a step backwards."

Cameron then talked about the character Sarah Connor from the Terminator films, which he directed. "Sarah Connor was not a beauty icon. She was strong, she was troubled, she was a terrible mother, and she earned the respect of the audience through pure grit. And to me, [the benefit of characters like Sarah] is so obvious. I mean, half the audience is female!" Cameron said.

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Wonder Woman director Jenkins replied to Cameron, writing on Twitter, "James Cameron's inability to understand what Wonder Woman is, or stands for, to women all over the world is unsurprising as, though he is a great filmmaker, he is not a woman. Strong women are great. His praise of my film Monster, and our portrayal of a strong yet damaged woman was so appreciated. But if women have to always be hard, tough and troubled to be strong, and we aren't free to be multidimensional or celebrate an icon of women everywhere because she is attractive and loving, then we haven't come very far have we."

Jenkins continued, "I believe women can and should be EVERYTHING just like male lead characters should be. There is no right and wrong kind of powerful woman. And the massive female audience who made the film a hit it is, can surely choose and judge their own icons of progress."

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Then this past Wednesday, an interview with Cameron in  The Hollywood Reporter was released in which he stood by his previous comments about the movie. 

While talking about Gadot, Cameron said, "I mean, she was Miss Israel, and she was wearing a kind of bustier costume that was very form-fitting. She's absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. To me, that's not breaking ground. They had Raquel Welch doing stuff like that in the '60s. It was all in a context of talking about why Sarah Connor—what Linda created in 1991—was, if not ahead of its time, at least a breakthrough in its time. I don't think it was really ahead of its time because we're still not [giving women these types of roles]."

Cameron went on to tell THR, "So as much as I applaud Patty directing the film and Hollywood, uh, 'letting' a woman direct a major action franchise, I didn't think there was anything groundbreaking in Wonder Woman. I thought it was a good film. Period. I was certainly shocked that [my comment] was a controversial statement. It was pretty obvious in my mind. I just think Hollywood doesn't get it about women in commercial franchises. Drama, they've got that cracked, but the second they start to make a big commercial action film, they think they have to appeal to 18-year-old males or 14-year-old males, whatever it is. Look, it was probably a little bit of a simplistic remark on my part, and I'm not walking it back, but I will add a little detail to it, which is: I like the fact that, sexually, she had the upper hand with the male character, which I thought was fun."

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