How her role in Wonder Woman 1984 changed Kristen Wiig

Barbara Ann Minerva was born on the pages of a comic book, but is writ large in the tradition of tough-talking, no-nonsense cinematic bad girls such as Kitty Collins in The Killers, Laura Hunt in Laura and Betty Anderson in Peyton Place.

The nemesis of the iconic heroine Wonder Woman and known as the Cheetah, Barbara Ann Minerva is the result of 1940s-era comic-book-grade pop psychology: the indulged childhood and split personality in deadly combination. "Don’t you know me?" the feline-skinned dark reflection asked of her, staring back in a somewhat hokey-in-hindsight broken mirror origin moment. "I am the real you, the Cheetah, the treacherous, relentless huntress."

“I’ve never been in a movie like this. Cheetah is a strong, powerful person and I wanted to feel that way.”Credit:Olivia Malone/Trunk Archive/Snapper Images

Compared to her higher profile comic book stablemates – Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman and Aquaman – the Cheetah isn’t exactly a household name. Even in a pantheon of comic book villains, she’s the most sensible in a line-up which includes some improbable names including Giganta (who was giant), Hypnota (who hypnotised people) and Eviless (who was … well, you get the picture.)

But in Wonder Woman 1984, under the guiding hand of director Patty Jenkins and actor Kristen Wiig, the Cheetah is brought to ferocious life.

"I have to give most of the credit to Patty because in talking about the character she’s very conscious of all of those things and how they’re portrayed, and what the tone is, and what the message is, and what it says about being a woman, and being a bad villain and being a woman," Kristen tells Sunday Life.

"Also, going from this sort of frumpy, invisible, ignored character to this woman who is sexier and who is more confident and what that says," she adds.

On the big screen, opposite Wonder Woman’s alter-ego, the Amazon princess Diana (Gal Gadot), Kristen’s transformation into the Cheetah is genuinely thrilling. "She goes through a lot of different stages," Kristen says. "I feel like I essentially play four different people and we wanted to make each one different."

As a little girl, Kristen’s family moved frequently, from Canandaigua, New York, where she was born, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and then to Rochester, New York. At the time, she says, she had no interest in performing either on stage or in front of the camera. In fact, she only took acting as a course to fill a subject requirement for an art degree at the University of Arizona.

After she moved to Los Angeles, she found her footing at The Groundlings, the city’s now famous improvisational comedy group. Among its alumni are Jennifer Coolidge, Kathy Griffin, Lisa Kudrow, Maya Rudolph and Edie McClurg.

These days, the 47-year-old New York-born actor is best-known in the US as one of the stars of Saturday Night Live, a sketch comedy talent factory which has been cranking out superstars such as Michael McKean, Eddie Murphy and Julia Louis-Dreyfus for decades.

Since her mid-2000s tenure on the show, Kristen has notched up a handful of film hits including Bridesmaids (2011), Ghostbusters (2016) and now the highly anticipated follow-up to Wonder Woman (2017). The sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, shifts the action from wartime America to the 1980s and delves into the comic book canon, lining up Kristen as Wonder Woman’s feline nemesis, Cheetah. (Think of her as a blonde Catwoman.)

"It was very sexualised," she says, reflecting on the 1980s. "The hair was big, the make-up was strong, shoulder pads, heels, tight, high-waisted things. It’s hard to talk about the evolution of fashion and where it ended up [and] how to explain that.

"To me, I was very young in the 1980s, so I would look at my friends’ older sisters and what they were doing, and it was more colour, more fabric, more layers of socks, more pegs in your jeans, it was just adding on," she says. "There was no rule of, ‘Take an accessory off before you walk out the door.’ "

Growing up in the 1980s also meant that Kristen had posters on her wall of women we now see as the first generation of female action heroes: Linda Hamilton, who played Sarah Connor in the Terminator film series, and Sigourney Weaver, who played Ellen Ripley in the Alien franchise.

"I am sure subconsciously I was watching all of those movies, taking all of that in," Kristen says. "Seeing women in those kinds of roles, that was the time, and starting to see more women have those physical roles, [such as] Sigourney Weaver. That was a big one. I mean, Alien."

Those performances informed many that have come since. They inform the physicality of a superhero generally – the hands-on-hips stance and the arch of the spine – but for actors such as Brie Larson (Captain Marvel), Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) and now Kristen, the devil is in the detail.

“My hair’s different, I’ve got the runny make-up and the ripped skirt – and there’s something about being in that costume and incorporating the beginning of Cheetah’s new walk and stance. It was a very cool moment for me.”

"When [Cheetah] is first revealed to the audience, the first part of her transformation, you do feel like everyone in the room, even though they’re actors, they’re looking at you like, ‘Oh my god, what happened to you?’ " Kristen says.

"My hair’s different, I’ve got the runny make-up and the ripped skirt – and there’s something about being in that costume and incorporating the beginning of Cheetah’s new walk and stance. It was a very cool moment for me."

Under the direction of Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman 1984 dials up the action, setting the noble and ancient Diana of Themyscira on a collision course with Kristen’s Cheetah, who is, in contrast,
a jangled mess of violent emotion.

"When I am in full Cheetah and Gal is in full Wonder Woman and it’s the fight, it’s exhilarating," she says of the film’s elaborate action sequences. "Then of course they yell ‘Cut’ and start laughing and we’re like, ‘Are you okay?’ ‘Did I hurt you?’

"But the physical part of it was a really important thing for me as an actress, to even just be comfortable in doing this part, because I’ve never done a role like this, I’ve never been in a movie like this. Cheetah is a strong, powerful person and I wanted to feel that way.

"They wanted us to train for many months. We had an amazing stunt team and of course I wanted to be like, ‘No, I want to do it, I want to do it.’ But there were definitely stunts that I couldn’t do, or it was too risky for me to get hurt."

As a villainess cast in the comic book mould, there is a tendency to see Cheetah only in the way she relates to Wonder Woman. The iconic heroine encapsulates everything good and, therefore, the fast-unravelling Cheetah is laden with everything bad.

“I think the want to have more things and to be different than who we are, is greater because of all of these images and all of these people who seem to have it all, which is a shame.”Credit:Jason Bell

"[This is] where we find Barbara and playing her was actually kind of hard, because it’s so sad," says Kristen. "She knows that when she walks into a room, no one’s going to even notice her. And she’s always wanted to be the cool girl, or noticed, or popular, or anything other than who she is.

"And it’s doubly sad because Diana even brings out the fact that Barbara is really loving and open and funny and free and honest. [But] she just doesn’t see that, she’s so focused on what she’s not and seeing all these other beautiful, amazing women who can have conversations with men and have female friends, and [knowing] she’s just not that person."

For one flickering moment, might they be friends? "To have these two people who are just the opposite connect with each other and see something good in themselves and in the other person is such a beautiful relationship," she says.

In that sense, Barbara Ann Minerva serves as a metaphor for most of us: longing to be seen and grappling with the existential challenge of being largely ignored while a louder, faster, more socially connected world passes us by.

"That’s why it’s so interesting," Kristen says. "To have that sense of humanity, it does make it harder for the audience. That’s why someone like Tony Soprano was, like, so compelling to watch because in some scenes you’re like, ‘I feel so bad for him. I’m on his side.’

"I don’t know if it’s because of social media, I don’t want to blame it on that, but it’s easier to see things that you don’t have and see people that have them and that they look really happy with them," she says. "And so I think the want to have more things and to be different than who we are, is greater because of all of these images and all of these people who seem to have it all, which is a shame."

And at its heart? A story of female power, she says.

"People have different definitions of feminism and what a feminist is, but in the first Wonder Woman movie it was really refreshing for people to see a superhero who believed so much in the power of love.

"And I guess some people can equate that to more of a feminine trait, because she was so nurturing and she is feminine and strong.

"She’s a strong woman who believes in humanity and she’s not about kicking people’s asses and it’s not really women versus men," Kristen adds.

"She’s very inclusive … even Gal said, it’s not just women or young girls who are affected by this movie, it’s everybody. It’s sort of a universal message."

Wonder Woman 1984 is in cinemas December 26.

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale December 6. To read more from Sunday Life, visit The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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