Kaia Gerber Breaks Silence on Her Role in Gal Gadot’s Viral ‘Imagine’

Kaia Gerber wants to set the record straight.

In a new episode of KISS UK’s interview show Do Not Disturb, the model and actress, 24, opened up about her appearance in the viral montage of celebrities singing “Imagine” by John Lennon, which was shared by Gal Gadot during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“I want to clear the air on something really badly,” Gerber stated before continuing, “Basically, my friend, during the pandemic, said, ‘Hey, my friend asked me to make a video, will you be in it?’ I didn’t ask any questions.”

“We were staying together at the time, thought it was for someone’s birthday, and I said, ‘Sure,’” she recalled. “What was the song? ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon. And then about a week later, a video gets released of all these famous people singing along to ‘Imagine.’ And I go, ‘What a weird coincidence. I wonder if this song is having a comeback. I just did a birthday video singing ‘Imagine.’’ And then I’m about a minute into the video, and there I go. There I am.”

Gerber appears in the video alongside Cara Delevingne and Ashley Benson. The trio sway and snap their fingers as they sing the lyrics.

“It was my first credit on my IMDb,” the Palm Royale actress added. “It is still, to this day, on my IMDb. I’ve accepted it. We’re moving past it, but I would just like to clear the air that I did not know. I thought I was making a video for someone’s birthday.”

Along with Gadot, the three-minute viral video features a handful of celebrities taking turns covering Lennon’s famous song, including Natalie Portman, Jimmy Fallon, Zoë Kravitz, Will Ferrell, Amy Adams, James Marsden, Mark Ruffalo, Sarah Silverman, Sia and Maya Rudolph.

The actress shared the original video on her own Instagram account, telling her followers that she had been “feeling a bit philosophical” while in “self-quarantine” during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which at that point had only recently begun in the U.S.

The clip received some criticism online from people who said that celebrities should be donating to aid in COVID-19 relief rather than simply singing about a better world.

In October 2020, Gadot responded to the backlash, telling Vanity Fair that she “had nothing but good intentions.”

“Sometimes, you know, you try and do a good deed, and it’s just not the right good deed,” said the Wonder Woman star.

“I started with a few friends, and then I spoke to Kristen [Wiig],” she added. “Kristen is like the mayor of Hollywood. Everyone loves her, and she brought a bunch of people to the game. But yeah, I started it, and I can only say that I meant to do something good and pure, and it didn’t transcend.”

In 2022, Gadot told InStyle that while the video was made with “pure intentions,” it “wasn’t the right timing” or “the right thing.”

While Gadot said she “was seeing where everything was headed” at the time, she knows now that the video “was premature.”