David Kelley on finding his Wonder Woman: “I just knew it”

New York Magazine has an interview with David E. Kelley and he talks about Wonder Woman among lots of things. He says that he originally turned down the project:

But then I started thinking about, What if there were such a person in today’s world and what must it be like to be her? And I was imagining the sense of social isolation that she must feel, that she indeed would probably be a rather complicated beast. When I started thinking about all the complications and potential layers to this superhero, I just got more and more intrigued. It was also something I was a little bit afraid of. That’s good, too. Any writer should get out of his or her comfort zone, and this was way outside of mine

He says that DC and Warner Brothers both “responded positively— and off we went.”

And on finding Wonder Woman?

It was not an easy search, but it went far quicker than I ever imagined. After writing this script, I remember looking at several people and going, “Yeah, now good luck trying to find her.” She’s got to be strong, smart, emotionally accessible — and oh yeah, an Amazon! Good luck. I remember speaking to DC, and saying, “We may have to compromise on the physicality. We need to go with the best actress. And if the best actress is five-foot-five, we have to be open to that, because there’s too many layers for this character to also demand that she be nearly six feet tall.”

He talks about meeting Palicki

I had seen her on Friday Night Lights and I always liked her work, but I didn’t get a sense of her stature. I guess he was sitting down in a lot of the scenes. So she stood up, and we met — eyeball to eyeball — she smiled … and I knew during the course of the conversation that this was Wonder Woman. I just knew it. I had an instinctive feeling that this was her. So then she read. And she was. And she is.

Palicki is 5”11.