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Lynda Carter on Wonder Woman, Gay Rights, and Her New Album

“This is a dual role,” Lynda Carter says of her famous stint on the iconic 1970s television series Wonder Woman. She means that the role of Wonder Woman meant also playing her alter-ego secret identity Diana Prince.

But the fact is, Lynda Carter, the person, has been playing another dual role for a long time now.

On the surface, there’s a stunning beauty that was on vivid display in that outrageously revealing Wonder Woman costume and who seems to have faced down the years since then with little consequence.

But underneath those good looks is another Lynda Carter, an outspoken woman of varied tastes and interests — a self-described “iPod shuffle.”

Last fall, she made headlines by saying of Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who had been compared to Wonder Woman, “She’s the anti-Wonder Woman. She’s judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how they’ve got to live their lives. And a superior religious self-righteousness. That’s just not what Wonder Woman is about.”

This “secret” Lynda Carter is also a surprisingly accomplished vocalist, who had a promising singing career prior to being cast as Wonder Woman, and who did a series of highly acclaimed (and Emmy-nominated) television specials in the 1970s and 80s.

Recently, I got a chance to chat with Lynda about her days as Wonder Woman (of course!), but also her thoughts on Adam versus Kris, the Carrie Prejean controversy, and her decision to finally return to her first love, music, with an engaging new CD of standards and classic songs, At Last.

AfterEllen.com: When did you become aware that you were a feminist icon? Were you aware at the time when you were filming Wonder Woman?

Lynda Carter: Oh, absolutely. Yes. I was very aware of it. As a matter of fact, I also felt that my personal character had to be non-predatory in any way. I would be the first person if some woman’s guy was looking at me wrong, I’d pop him upside the head and say, “Get a grip!” Wonder Woman would expect that. She was never against men, she was just for women. I was very deliberate in my approach.

AE: I thought one of the most subversive things about the show, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, was that Steve Trevor was always the one getting into trouble. He’d fight, but ultimately he’d be captured, and it was Wonder Woman who had to rescue him. It’s a complete turning of the tables. She was never a victim.

LC: I think that’s part of the empowerment, and it’s also the secret self, the archetype that appeals to gay and lesbian men and women, that there’s a secret self that is waiting to be unveiled, that is powerful and won’t ever be a victim. I think she was a great character, and I was privileged to play that character.

AE: When did you became aware that you had a strong gay following?

LC: Interestingly enough, in Bette Midler’s early career, I thought she was the most original sounding person I’d heard. So I sort of ate up what her story was about. I was already on the road, we’re not that far apart in age, and she was doing these gay bathhouses. Coming from Arizona, I didn’t know anything about any of that stuff. There were all these stories about how the gay population was so supportive and really drove her early success, and they were right. She’s amazing. So I was told, “Girl, I’ll tell you something, if you ever have a gay following you will know that you’ve made it.”

AE: Hey, we’ve got good taste!

LC: Yeah! [It was maybe fifteen years ago and] I was sitting at my home here in Potomac, Maryland, and did an interview with a young woman from a gay publication, a lesbian magazine I think it was, and she starts talking about [that fact that I’m a gay icon], and I’m kind of looking at her, and she goes, “You don’t know, do you? You’re so cool!” And I was like, “Tell me! Tell me!” And I was dancing around. “Oh my God! I can’t believe it!” It was great.

AE: Well, I’m sorry we didn’t get the word to you sooner!

LC: I know! I so get it though. I so get it. I’m such a champion of civil liberties for the gay and lesbian population, like I am for women and being able to choose.

AE: I’m curious if you’re friends with any of the other female action icons: Lindsay Wagner, Charlie’s Angels, or even Lucy Lawless who plays Xena? Have you met any of these other actors?

LC: I’ve met Lucy Lawless, and she couldn’t have been nicer. We had a nice conversation. I think how she approached her character, how the show approached her, was great. Lindsay Wagner was a friend of mine a million years ago, I just don’t have the opportunity to see her, but whenever I meet a mutual friend, I always send her my best. Same with Jaclyn Smith. I never knew Kate Jackson, but Farrah, we used to all go on the same interviews for the same one part. [laughs]

AE: I read in an interview from a couple weeks ago that you’ve been in touch with the producers of the Wonder Woman movie, and it sounds like there is some progress. Is there a role for you?

LC: I have a lot of friends over at Warner Brothers, and I get updates now and again, but it really depends on the director and the script. I hope it’s a blockbuster. If there’s a place for me, great, but if there isn’t, that’s okay, too. I don’t think I would do a cameo. Unless there was a real part where there was something more than just a little, bitty thing, I’d just let them bask in the glory. It needs to be done and done well. I wish them the best.

AE: Has there been any talk of a specific role for you?

LC: Yeah, there has been. Off and on, but then they switch gears, and they’re not happy with the script. It’s fairly simple. Everything has to be character driven. It has to be a good story. It’s not about the effects. Those will all take care of themselves. There’ll be some great things, but if they have a good story, just the story itself, it doesn’t even have to be very complicated, you know?

AE: I also think, I’m not the first to say this, you’re so associated with the role, unlike other superheroes. I think everybody agrees you were perfectly cast. They really need to get the casting right. It needs to be someone who can really reinvent the character.

LC: Sometimes that’s a problem. I don’t think it’s as much reinventing as not playing Wonder Woman. You can’t play Wonder Woman. You play a person who happens to have these powers, these skills. You have to play her as just a woman. You have all the opportunity in the world, because this is a dual role. I would never dumb her down. I wanted people to know Wonder Woman through Diana Prince.

AE: I know you are a former beauty pageant winner…

LC: [laughs] God, you’re really bringing up all the old stuff.

AE: I know you had an opinion on Sarah Palin, but I’m curious what you make of the whole Carrie Prejean controversy.

LC: I disagree with her stance, but I think she was used by this group. I think she wasn’t well-informed. Anything that is trying to take away personal freedom is not a very good thing. It’s not what the nation is about. You can disagree, but it seemed a little bit self-righteous. You do provocative photographs, then you can’t go preaching morals. You walk around in a bikini, and then you’re going to go tell other people how to live their lives? I just think it’s shameful, honestly. That being said, I do think she’s just ill-informed and misinformed. I think that’s the problem with most people that don’t get it. It’s like, how do I make myself short? You want me to become a double amputee so I can satisfy your need for me to be short?

AE: Do you watch American Idol.

LC: I do! There’s so many talented people.

AE: [The final winner hadn’t been announced when this interview was done.] Who are you rooting for, Adam and Kris?

LC: I think as an artist, the most original person, and he’ll be successful whether he wins it or not, is Adam. Although, I do like Kris. I mean what’s not to like?

AE: The thing that strikes me about both of them is that they’re so self-assured, and they have all the attention of the world on them. I wonder if you can relate, because for at least a few years there, you were just as popular as a person can get.

LC: You know what? It’s very isolating. It’s about your work. That’s not a boohoo or anything, I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for anyone, but by virtue of the fact that you are so popular, you lose a piece of your everyday stuff, of a certain kind of interaction that is important to keep.

AE: I suppose you have people telling you you’re great, exactly what you want to hear.

LC: People aren’t going to come up to you and say, “Oh, I think you’re just so mediocre!” Unless somebody is just a jerk, they wouldn’t. It is what it is. It’s not easy.

AE: I can only imagine how busy a person is with that kind of schedule.

LC: I was thinking the same thing. When do they have time to work on their music? They’re doing the commercials, and the parades, and everything else…Wow!

AE: But you must have experienced that.

LC: I was pretty busy, yeah, but I didn’t have a family then, and that was what I’d worked toward all my life. But it was still isolating. I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to learn how to be in a relationship, really. We moved around a lot at first as a kid, and then I was on the road at 17, and new in town by the time I got to LA, and then famous again with that whirlwind. I did really want substance in my life, and when I stopped with the road for my children, it was really because I didn’t want to miss out. It wasn’t just selflessness. I didn’t want to miss out on that.

AE: But where do you go once you’ve been on top of the world?

LC: Substance? [laughs] I’m going through substance, baby!

AE: You know, I really loved your new CD.

Lynda Carter: Thank you very much!

AE: We get a lot of material here, and I was very pleasantly surprised by how good it was.

LC: I get that a lot. I did music all my life, it’s kind of what I did, but it wasn’t something anybody knew me for. I started singing professionally at 14. That’s how I earned enough money to move to California and study acting, and get into that. That’s what I started with.

AE: You’re absolutely right. It’s not fair of people to have expectations because you’re famous for one thing, but you happen to have this other talent.

LC: No, no, no! I think it’s totally fair. I totally get it. That was more my point. I do get it.

AE: I have very vivid memories of your TV specials when I was younger. I re-watched them before talking to you, and I didn’t realize because I was too young at the time to see how really daring they were.

LC: They really were! Looking back, I think the same thing.

AE: Was this your idea? How did this come about? And how were you able to get this on TV?

LC: I had been singing, and when I got famous, it took it into a whole new arena. When they found out I could sing, I played Vegas and I did tours all over. Then PBS saw me, and that was the time before MTV, and we approached it in that way, a very MTV way, where it was more about vignettes, the story about the song more than concert stuff. We did have concert things in it, but we really did these vignettes. It was great. You’re right, I was very lucky to be able to do that.

AE: The guest stars you had! Was this a deliberate effort to reinvent yourself?

LC: No. It was right during Wonder Woman, and it was really to broaden and take advantage of the fame in other areas. I got the offer to do it and I wanted to make them very special. It was more about taking advantage of opportunities.

AE: Obviously, music is very important to you. As you said, it preceded the acting, and followed Wonder Woman, and you’ve been performing live all these years…

LC: I actually stopped when I got pregnant with my son. I’d been on the road since I was 17-years-old, and it’s not a life that’s conducive to raising a family. It ends up being all about the “current.” It’s not about the children.

It’s an unrealistic life, and I didn’t want that for my children. By the time I was ready to sing again, it was just never the right opportunity. My son’s last year of high school, he was about to be a senior in high school, so it was about four years ago, I got an offer to do Chicago in the West End in London, the musical. That really started everything again.

AE: So once you got back on stage, that’s what precipitated the CD?

LC: Exactly. My son was going away. I cried every time he mentioned college, I’d tear up. I realized I had to refocus on what it is I wanted to do. My daughter’s now a senior in high school, and she’ll be going off in the fall so it’s been geared towards finding what I really want to do. That coupled with what opportunities present themselves. Just because I want to act again doesn’t mean I’ll get cast in all these great roles. It’s in deliberate steps, still maintaining quite a presence at home in my daughter’s last year of high school.

AE: Listening to the CD, and listening to you now, it certainly seems like this project was a labor of love in the best possible sense, and you don’t have anybody to please except yourself. I think maybe that’s why the CD is so good.

LC: It’s also that I’ve sort of moved on with my performance. The more that I work with these great musicians, it’s very inspiring. I work very closely with my musical director back in the day, and we came up with a lot of things together. I may bring ten songs to this group of musicians I work with, and they might do a track for me so I can see how it feels, and then, I take it down to Tennessee and we work on it.

So it ends up being something I’m having fun with because it’s irreverent, or I always wanted to do, or I like the message, I like the way it makes me feel. I’m not so much doing my parent’s old standards that have been done so much. It’s a lot of songs that growing up I knew. I’m gearing more toward that kind of thing, as well as writing some. I don’t know what’s going to end up in the show the next time. I don’t know what I’m going to end up with. It’ll just present itself. I’m not really a genre. I’m more of an iPod shuffle — surprising things. I don’t really have a bag.

AE: Thank you so much for speaking with us. The CD is going on my iPod.

LC: Thank you so much!

Lynda Carter’s CD, At Last, will be released June 9th. Visit Lynda online at lyndacartersings.com.

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