Lynda Carter says ‘Wonder Woman 3’ won’t happen ‘unless there’s enough pressure from fans’: ‘I don’t understand that’

Lynda Carter thinks the only way Wonder Woman 3 will ever get made is if there’s a fan demand and outcry.

“I don’t think they want to do it unless there’s enough pressure from fans,” the original Diana Prince tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I just don’t think they have the mind to do it. And I don’t understand that, because it seems to me that Wonder Woman is different from other characters. She’s not just a superhero. Her whole thing is about peaceful solutions. She’s not aggressive to be aggressive. It’s a different story. It’s about inner strength, outer strength. I don’t know why they tabled it, because it’s a great franchise.”

The third film from director Patty Jenkins, which was killed in December 2022 amid DC Studios’ overhaul, “was really interesting, wonderful and about something important,” Carter teases. “Not just your typical thing. But they don’t want anyone else to make it.” (There seemed to be renewed hope last year, but it was a bust. Jenkins, who is currently working on Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, said this month that Wonder Woman 3 is dead “for the time being, easily forever.”)

Carter, of course, played TV’s Wonder Woman from 1975 to 1979. Using her golden Lasso of Truth, the Miss World USA 1972 roped in fans of all ages. When Jenkins brought the franchise to the big screen in 2017, with Gal Gadot in the title role as the Amazon warrior-princess, she consulted with Carter, of whom she was a longtime fan. Carter appeared as the warrior Asteria in the sequel Wonder Woman 1984, which came out in 2020, and was set to appear in the third film.

“I have to give a lot of credit to Patty and Gal because the interest in my show had peaked when they came on the scene” and rebooted the franchise with the record-breaking first film, Carter says. Their vision of the iconic character “was intentional — and how I played the character was intentional. To be good, kind, strong and do everything for the right reasons. Even when she was angry, she was angry at the right people.”

The female superhero “represents who we really are inside,” she says. “We are strong and beautiful at all ages. We are powerful, loving and kind. That’s the essence of us.”

Of course, when the films were announced, with Gadot the new, younger face of the franchise, people were looking for a sexist catfight-type narrative.

“We all embraced each other and we’re very good friends,” says Carter, who’s in a group text chat with Jenkins and Gadot. “We took the steam right out. ‘No, we love each other.’ ‘Oh, darn.’ Sharing that legacy with someone is wonderful.”

While Carter, 72, recently said she’s been turning down most acting offers that come her way, “Anything Patty asked me to do, I wouldn’t refuse,” she says.

It’s hard to believe that Carter’s version of Wonder Woman turns 50 next year. The show ran from 1975 to 1979, and Carter was the highest-paid TV actress at that time. She’d arrive hours before her call time to practice acrobatics for the role, and attributes her famous Wonder Woman spin to dance training. But it was a very different era of TV making.

“They didn’t really have stuntwomen back then. They only had stuntmen,” she recalls. “When they first tried putting a man in my costume, it was ridiculous. They strapped a wig on a guy. He had a square body! I said: ‘There’s no way that can be me. He’s got a Wonder Woman suit with short legs and big arms. You can’t get far enough away to know that’s not me.’”

She says she was told, “‘Oh no, it’ll be fine.’”

After Carter did a risky stunt, in which she was pulled up by a helicopter with no safety net, the network ensured that a woman was brought in as her regular double. Jeannie Epper, of the famous Epper stunt family, landed the job. However, both women would train for the stunts, so Carter would do the beginning of a jump, Epper would take over for the harder part (like smashing through a window) and Carter would do the ending.

“You have to look like you’re doing them correctly,” Carter says. “I did a lot of the fight scenes, which I loved.”

Carter’s fans may know that she’s always been a singer alongside her superhero duties. She headlined a bunch of TV specials in the 1970s and ’80s. Singing has remained an important part of her life and has helped her cope with the 2021 death of her husband of 37 years, Robert A. Altman. Her new single, “Letters From Earth,” is about things she’d tell him if she could.

“He was my guy,” she says of Altman, who died of myelofibrosis, a chronic leukemia. “I heard about the experience of losing someone as … an actual physical pain — and it really is. It’s so unbelievably strange when you love someone that much — and they just disappear off the Earth.”

While Carter, who shared two children, James and Jessica, with Altman, has been “determined to be happy” since his death, “because the last thing I know [he] would want would be for us to be incapable of moving forward,” she found herself trying to reach him. “I thought: ‘Where are you?’” she says. “His physical presence is gone, but his presence is still alive in my life.”

She found a connection through writing letters to him, which she turned into the song, polished by her co-writer John Jarvis. She’s been touched by the reception.

“A girlfriend whose husband recently died came up to me and said, ‘It’s like you wrote it for me. I feel so lonely without him,’” she recalls. “We stood there in the Library of Congress — at this great dinner for Elton John — and she was crying. I’m overwhelmed with the response that I’ve been getting. It’s what every writer and singer wants: that your music might touch another person … and in some way get embedded in their heart. I really want people to feel the healing of it.”

Carter has other songs that she plans to release this year — some that are fun and not serious at all — stories of life for her right now. “But ‘Letters From Earth’ is very special to me,” she says. “[Robert] was an amazing person — and I still want to talk to him.”

Whether Carter is at the Library of Congress dinner, the White House or Paris Fashion Week, she gets a kick out of the coverage of her red carpet moments. She’s been called a “golden goddess,” with people obsessing over her enduring beauty and, sometimes, her footwear.

“I travel with my daughter a lot and it seems that we get a lot with that,” Carter says of Jessica, who is also a singer. “But I really do get tickled” by the headlines. “I am tickled.”

She says her approach to style is “dressing classically” and “not really thinking about it too much” or buying “the newest thing.” As for the sneakers, “it’s really about: I don’t want to wear heels,” she laughs.

Carter continues, “I do try to use a lot of creams, but time just marches on. Age just is what it is — and I’m trying to do it gracefully.”