UPDATE, September 7: Josh Horowitz bet Arjona $500 that she’s playing Wonder Woman, and she took the bet. She also confirmed she knew the role when she auditioned.
Adria Arjona will show you every rep of the training. She still won’t tell you who it’s for.
Women’s Health just released a “Strong Like” episode with the Man of Tomorrow actress, shot in a boxing gym while she promotes A24’s Onslaught.
“Hi, I’m Adria Arjona and I play Celeste in Onslaught,” she says at the top. “And today I’m going to show you how I train to save the day in that trailer park.”
That movie gets named in the first thirty seconds. Her other project never does.
“If I’m working out for a movie, which is actually what I’m training now for, a specific project,” Arjona says, setting up the routine. “You’re going to hate this. This is horrible. Do not do this at home. Please eat your sandwich.”
“I wake up. I do cardio for about 45 minutes. And then I do weightlifting for about two hours,” she continued. “Then after the workout, I’ll have a bite to eat. Nikki will come. We’ll box for six rounds, and then I eat again. And then I eat and I eat and I go to sleep.”
And what gets her up for all of that?
“I think the excitement of playing the woman I’m playing gives me everything I need to wake up,” Arjona said.
As Cosmic Book News exclusively reported on June 28, our insiders say the woman she’s playing is Wonder Woman, the same insiders who told us Hal Jordan dies in Lanterns five months before the episode aired, and that Daredevil: Born Again was getting retooled.
DC Studios and James Gunn have never named her character.
“Do Not Do This At Home”
Arjona has boxed with her coach, Nikki, for ten years. The movie prep stacked everything else on top of it.
“It’s a job,” she said. “I’m really enjoying it. I’m enjoying the transformation, but it’s hard work. I’ve never felt stronger, but it’s hard.”
“I started with 10 pounds, and I could never imagine a world where I would be able to be doing that exercise with 50 pounds, or squatting 180 pounds,” Arjona said.
At one point she holds her hands up to the camera: “As you can tell, I am shaking. But look at that, battle wounds right there. Proof.”
“Physically, it’s exhausting, but it’s all for the better good,” she added, before catching herself. “The better good. Is that English? The greater good. Yes, baby. English second language, baby.”
The goal isn’t the mirror anymore, either.
“It stops being sort of a physical appearance — oh, does this muscle show or that muscle shows,” Arjona said. “It’s more about what my body can actually do.”
It’s the same transformation she recently described in August: two to three hours a day, a “crazy diet,” and “muscles that I’ve never had in my life” — training she said was for James Gunn’s Superman sequel.
Her scenes shot in the final weeks before the film wrapped on August 26.
She Names Every Role Except This One
In the same video, Arjona names Superman.
Asked to pick fights she’d win or lose, she said: “David Corenswet is knocking me out for sure. I mean, he’s Superman.”
Her Hit Man co-star doesn’t get the same respect: “I’m gonna beat the [expletive] out of Glen Powell. I love you, Glen. He’s little. He’s a little boy.”
Five months after her DC casting broke, her own character still has none.
Deadline printed Maxima in April and now calls the role undisclosed. Arjona has been asked directly — on camera at Comic-Con and in print — and has never once said Maxima.
Per our August 12 reporting, insiders say her Wonder Woman is more of a cameo, in a movie Gunn stacked with fan service. Cameo or not, she’s building a body that has to sell a superhero the second she’s on screen.
Update: Variety is now questioning if Arjona is playing Wonder Woman after they first said Maxima.
The Other Wonder Woman Spoke This Week
The video lands the same week Gal Gadot drew her own line. On September 3, wrapping an interview with JoBlo, Gadot said: “If Zack comes back to run DC, I’ll come back.”
That puts two Wonder Womans on the calendar at once: the one insiders say debuts under Gunn on July 9, 2027, and the one waiting on the regime lined up behind the Paramount merger.
Related
- Adria Arjona Is Wonder Woman In Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow (Exclusive)
- Adria Arjona Filmed Man of Tomorrow In Its Final Weeks
- Adria Arjona Won’t Deny She’s Wonder Woman At Comic-Con: “I’m With Family”
- Gal Gadot Confirms Wonder Woman Return If Zack Snyder Runs DC: “I’ll Come Back”
- Man of Tomorrow: Everything We Know
