Gal Gadot — we mean Matt Ketai.
Video: mattketaiandtimjanas
Gal Gadot is confused. She doesn’t recognize the new actor playing Superman. In fact, she can’t quite understand that one role can be portrayed by multiple actors across different films. “I am Wonder Woman!” she declares, puzzled. “Kal-El, no!” Except Gadot looks a little different in this viral video, given it’s actually a bearded gay guy making fun of her.
The sketch is the work of Matt Ketai, 36, and Tim Janas, 37. For weeks now, the pair have been posting a video almost daily to their TikTok and Instagram accounts in which Ketai’s Gadot struggles to take direction from Janas’s acting coach. In the sketches, which have racked up millions upon millions of views, Ketai overaccentuates Gadot’s singsongy Israeli accent but also seems to be processing human emotion for the very first time with wide-eyed bewilderment. The impression has been so uncanny for many people that they now instantly associate Ketai with the actor. “I don’t even see the dude anymore,” one commenter wrote on a video. “All I see is Gal Gadot practicing her lines.”
Ketai’s version of Gadot is laced with snark but also a hint of truth: The real Gadot has been learning acting on the job. After winning the Miss Israel pageant in 2004, then serving a mandatory two-year stint in the Israel Defense Forces, she kind of fell into movies and was catapulted to stardom in astonishing speed. Just four years after her first Hollywood job in Fast & Furious (2009), she was chosen to play Wonder Woman, a role she’s played in no less than seven films. Her other film choices have been either forgettable — 2021’s Red Notice, anyone? — or memorable only for her bad reviews.
Online, Gadot is a frequent punching bag. Several of her line deliveries have become memes simply because they seem so awkward and stilted. Then there was the time she enlisted her celebrity friends to sing “Imagine” in a video ostensibly intended to inspire hope at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but which actually inspired a viral outbreak of cringe. She can also be a lightning rod for controversy due to her outspoken support for her home country. Mostly, though, there is a consensus among many people (and film critics) that she is simply not a very good actor. “Gal Gadot is the female version of Tommy Wiseau,” one person wrote on a recent video from Janas and Ketai.
Ketai, an actor and comedian in Brooklyn, explains why TikTok viewers can’t get enough of what one commenter described as his “lobotomy stare.”
I haven’t been able to open TikTok in the last month without seeing one of your videos.
People are saying that you and Gal Gadot have kind of merged in their brains at this point. So I want to know, how did a bearded gay guy in his 30s pull that off?
I think we’ve incepted their minds and provided, hopefully, for some, a better version.
There’s a game that Tim and I like to do, and it’s the greatest high. We try to make each other laugh all the time. And that’s just how Gal Gadot happened. We tried to make each other laugh. I was explaining to Tim how bad of an actor she was, because Tim is chronically offline and I’m chronically online.
I noticed that there were videos this week on other things where you were using your normal voice, and it really threw people in the comments.
It does. Every time I do one of those, everyone just comments on me being Gal Gadot. And it was in those moments that I was like, “Oh, this is the bed I’ve made for myself.” Gal has cursed us all in many ways.
Tell me about your comedy journey and how you and Tim came to be collaborators.
Well, we’re best friends from speech-and-debate camp in Fairfax, Virginia. We met each other when we were 16 or 17 and remained friends throughout. I’m an actor by training. I went to grad school at Brown in an acting program that no longer exists, but they were very serious. It was Shakespeare training and classical acting, as well as dialect coaching, which does prove to be helpful in doing an impression. But after I graduated and started writing sketches with Tim and doing stand-up, I found that comedy was a much more interesting experience than just trying to do drama as an actor. We started doing more sketch stuff in the last year, and we would have various trending moments, but nothing like this.
For you, what separates a good celebrity impression from something forgettable?
A good celebrity impression means that you can move them into different scenarios and maintain the sort of core idea of who that celebrity is. Impressions where they just keep doing one thing aren’t always as successful as a celebrity that you can move into different scenarios or circumstances.
To do that, I guess you also need to nail certain key mannerisms or phrases that unlock something bigger about who that person is. What are the key things you do to get into character for Gal?
This sounds very stupid, but there’s an idea in my mind. First, it’s getting the voice. To do that, I usually say, “Kal-El, no!” or “Pies are luxuries!” I think about it as if it’s a human that is figuring everything out in front of them — like a baby. They are surprised at new information and also get upset at the new information. She’s never figuring out anything internally. It’s just straight in front.
Your Gal seems constantly unprepared and like she’s experiencing being a human for the first time — repeating words back to the acting coach or director. But it’s also kind of weirdly endearing too, because it does seem like she just wants to do a good job. She’s trying her best!
And that’s where the Gal leaves the Gal in real life. It’s not the Gal Gadot we know; it’s now the TikTok/online Gal Gadot.
Let’s talk about the Gal Gadot that we know. How do you describe the real Gal Gadot’s acting style? What were you telling Tim about her?
Gal is always a fish out of water. I think that’s how we were all bamboozled into thinking she was okay in Wonder Woman. We’re like, “Oh, that’s an okay actor,” because she was playing a character that was a fish out of water. And then, as we saw Death on the Nile, it was like, “Oh, no. Bad actor.” She’s a fish out of water as an actor; she just shouldn’t be there. It’s someone who doesn’t know what is happening or how to act in that situation — who is also pretty.
So many of her lines from movies have become memes because of her delivery.
I think we all respond to it because it’s tangible bad acting. So often, to portray bad acting is really hard for an actor. But there’s something very unique about Gal’s line readings for those movies that is tangible for all of us as audience members, where we can all collectively say, “That’s not it.” Like with the Champagne one; I don’t know if there’s a person that has watched any movie that’s like, “Well, that’s the way that should be said.”
And now you’ve also created a meme with this “Kal-El, no!” bit.
Again, it’s a curse. Everyone’s been cursed. Now we’re just stuck in the meme. We are the meme.
Your version of Gal makes it pretty clear that, in your opinion, she’s not a natural-born actor; she’s just kind of ended up in this industry and now needs to make it work, right? But that’s actually pretty close to her real career!
Yeah, from what I know about it. I’ve seen those two movies, Wonder Woman and Death on the Nile, and then I did the Cole Escola approach to Oh, Mary!. I was like, ‘I don’t need to know anything else. I don’t need to know about the other movies.’” So I don’t know the plots of them.
I haven’t seen some of her movies either, but it does feel like there is a type of movie she does that values action over acting, aesthetics over substance. They’re kind of bland and forgettable. Having done the Cole Escola method of research, what were your takeaways from her filmography?
I’m actually shocked there are as many movies as there are! I didn’t know she was in the Fast & Furious franchise! I was like, “Who does she play?!”
She’s obviously also someone that gets a lot of hate online. There’s the mockery, of course, from things like the infamous “Imagine” pandemic video. But she’s also very associated with — and she’s actively associated herself with — Israel and the IDF in the past. I’m wondering, given everything going on in Gaza, how much of the mockery that she gets now is because she’s become something of an avatar for the Israeli government? Or is it just about her?
It’s sort of multifaceted. I think that’s actually the part of a lot of impressions that are successful and speak to people: having a strong opinion about the person as a human, either positively or negatively. For me, it also played into my impression of her. What resonates with people is there’s a certain, in my opinion, level of tone-deafness as well, like with the “Imagine” video. That also fuels people’s willingness to respond to the impression.
I also think that, especially in the world we live in now — and this is unrelated to Gaza and Palestine — the idea of punching up and also punching at people who fail up is interesting. And people respond to that. This is a really good example of someone failing up, as well.
Do you think there is anyone else in Hollywood who has failed up like she has?
I would need to look at a list, but certainly a ton of white straight dudes have failed their way up to some careers.
But I also see the hard work of so many people in Hollywood who are not famous or they’ve worked so hard to become sort of famous. They’re my friends. They have so much talent, and even when they’re doing their best, they can still fail and not get another job.
So there is some level of indignation you have here for yourself and your friends that she can go seemingly straight to the top?
Yeah, I think that is also part of it. Perhaps it’s even a commentary on the system of how that works. But that’s showbiz!
You recently did a video showing Gal’s point of view looking back at Tim. You also said you’re getting flooded with requests. Are you taking us into a Gal Gadot cinematic universe here?
Everyone on the internet is actually very funny and brilliant. So they’d come up with fun suggestions, and we would do some of them where we put Gal in other scenarios, and then we would sort of expand on that.
Once I realized that we were all trapped in our own timeline, I was like, “Okay, what would make this funnier?” So it’s now getting meta with Gal knowing that there are these two guys that are making sketch videos, and then Gal responding to them.
Let’s talk about the meta ones where Gal is talking to her publicist and a lawyer. It seems like you’re trying to preempt something bad happening, perhaps. And I’m wondering what message you might have for the real Gal Gadot about your videos.
We were always afraid of getting sued or a cease and desist. Tim’s also a lawyer, so he was like, “That’s not going to happen,” but then that sparked the idea of Gal watching the Gal Gadot videos and talking to her lawyer.
I will say I am afraid of making these videos sometimes. I’m very much still in the industry, and I’m like, “Oh, no! What if her agents never want me to work, or someone who likes her doesn’t ever want me to work?” We have other videos coming up where she meets with her agent, and we decided that the agent should really like us.
Okay, you really are preempting that. Tim said in one of those videos that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Is that something you really believe?
I wouldn’t say in this case. No. I remember the video with Tim as the publicist saying that and then I, as Gal — but also as Matt — was like, “I don’t think they feel that way.”
