Patty Jenkins On Steve Trevor’s Portrayal In ‘Wonder Woman’

The DC Extended Universe is just continuing to grow year after year, with 2017 featuring two highly-anticipated pictures coming out. One of them is Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, starring Gal Gadot as she suits up once again as the iconic Amazon Princess in her solo film that will tell the origin story of the character.

Last week, Heroic Hollywood was invited to an edit bay visit in London along with several other outlets, where we met up with Jenkins and her team who are working hard on putting the final touches on the film as it gets ready to hit theaters this summer. The director and her team showed us a few clips and we got to learn a bit more about the upcoming DC Comics film. One of the characters we will meet in the film is Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor, who encounters Diana Prince when he crashes on Themyscira. When Diana meets him, she learns that he is a fighter pilot who has recently stolen some important intelligence from the German army that he needs to deliver to the British Allied Forces.

Jenkins spoke heavily about how important it was to get the character of Steve Trevor right in the movie as she didn’t want to portray him as a “damsel in distress.” For her, it was important to portray Steve as someone who is supportive of Diana while also having him be the one who helps her in areas that she perhaps doesn’t know much about.

“He actually is very difficult, but also very easy in a way. So he hasn’t changed, not at all since I have ever been interested, because of exactly that [reason]. I didn’t want him to be a damsel in distress, I didn’t want to make an issue out of it, I didn’t want to make a feminist statement with him. I wanted the guy who you want to be with, who is cool that you are trying to do something else at the same time. I wanted to live up to that emotionally myself. Since the beginning I have cared passionately about hitting that same target that anybody would want to hit for your love interest. Make him someone that I’m in love with, who believes in me and helps me where I have weakness. The vulnerability of that relationship meant everything to me and I would say it all the time throughout the movie to other people. I was like “You would never do that to Superman and you would never do that to Lois Lane”. If we would ever have [the discussion] of “She can’t need his help!” and if Superman went “F**k you Lois!”, how satisfying would that be to anybody? They have to need each other and it has to be a love story where everyone has to be stronger and more powerful. We just have to make it work. We can’t overthink of what it means to say that she needs him for a second or he knows more than her in this way and she knows more than him in another way. She’s a superhero, don’t worry about her. I think that Superman is a great parallel for that, all of them are, you know? You wouldn’t do it to Gwen Stacy, you wouldn’t do it to anybody, so it’s important that all of those people have their people in the world that believe in them, love and help them while understanding that their lives are complicated.”

Another iconic character from the mythology is the witty and charming Etta Candy, played by Lucy Davis in Wonder Woman, where she befriends Diana when she arrives in London for the first time. When asked about Diana’s relationship with Etta, Jenkins spoke about the light that the character brings with her as she is someone that adores Diana from the get-go.

“So there have been a lot of different versions of Etta and this is the version that works for Steve obviously. She is someone, because she is in Man’s World so she’s been there, she becomes like the humorous woman who is completely in trench with this specific time period of the world that is sexist and all those things. But she has got a great sense of humor and a great way of handling, navigating all of that, and adores Diana. It’s kind of the spirit of Etta Candy. “

Directed by Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman also stars Chris Pine as Steve Trevor, Lucy Davis as Etta Candy, Connie Nielsen as Queen Hippolyta, Robin Wright as General Antiope, Lisa Loven Kongsli as Menalippe, Danny Huston as General Erich Ludendorff, David Thewlis as Sir Patrick Morgan, Elena Anaya as Doctor Maru, Ewen Bremner as Charlie, Saïd Taghmaoui as Sameer and Eugene Brave Rock as the Chief.

Wonder Woman opens in theaters on June 2, 2017.