WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

	"We all have a sinful nature, " she reflects. "That's the way we are... "

	“Late," the maid says in broken English. "She sleep late-you wait." She points toward the living room. "Coffee, orange juice?" she asks.

	"Coffee," I say to her retreating back.

	"So," I sigh. Lynda Carter, the twice-canceled interviewee, is now "late." Plenty of time, then, to consider her future as I sink into a chocolate-brown sofa in her chocolate-brown house. Lynda Carter is what they refer to in the business as "hot." Hot means her Wonder Woman series goes weekly on CBS-TV next season-provided contractual disputes are settled. Then, too, there's her new record album for Epic that hit the stores this past June; the nightclub act she is deep in rehearsal for, with a planned Caesar's Palace debut; her marriage to Ron Samuels, the powerhouse behind Jaclyn Smith, Lindsay Wagner, Barbara Carrera, and Susan Anspach.

	Suddenly I hear a door opening at the end of a hallway, the sound of tennies scuffing the hardwood floors.

	We know each other. "It's been a long time," she says. After she hugs and kisses me, we settle down on the sofa. Lynda leans forward and rests her elbows on those famous long legs.

	"Tell me about your nightclub act," I say. "Are you nervous?"

	"No," she says matter-of-factly. "I'm excited, not nervous. It's something I've been working towards for a long time. It's the realization of some dreams from a long time ago. The show is a contemporary show, my kind of music." I couldn't help wondering what that was.

"Top forty," she replies. "I suppose it's no different from some of the other top-forty acts around in terms of music, but there are a few production-type numbers that are a little more staged than just the concert form. But, for the most part, it focuses on my singing as opposed to my dancing.

"My whole life I always sang," she says, smiling. "I only stopped when I studied acting for four years. The record album is done and I'm very pleased. I wrote two out of the three songs that were single contenders, which thrilled me."

Asked about her marriage of a little over one year, she replies eagerly: "It's good, really good."

"How did you meet?"

She squints her blue eyes at me. "You know what I'm going to do," she says. "I'm going to put my glasses on because I can't see you. "

She returns, with glasses on, and continues: "I met Ron about five years ago when I was walking through Burbank Studios. He tried to come after me. " She does a quick imitation: "'Hi, how are you? Why don't you come up to my office some time.' I went up to his office and we talked about business and stuff. I saw him at different parties for the next three years. Then I ran into him at an ABC affiliates' function. He had had a lot of press for setting a fabulous Universal deal for Lindsay Wagner. I went over and congratulated him. About six months later, he stopped by the studio to see a director that Lindsay used all the time. We went out together-and that was it!

"I went out with him Friday for lunch, Saturday to play tennis, Sunday to play tennis. We stayed together from early morning till night. It was like a whole marathon-we had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. We were totally enthralled. I never went out with anybody else again. I broke about forty dates-no hearts," she recalls.

"Is this 'pinch-me' time?" I asked, and she cocked her head in question. "Like a dream," I explain. "You know, pinch me-I must be dreaming."

"No," she says, sipping her tea, "it's not at all pinch-me time. That passed about-the last pinch-me time I can remember is when I met Ron and he was pinching me all the time." She breaks into laughter. "The last time for me was believing that I had met someone that I really fell in love with and who loved me back. Usually, its one-sided-one person loves the other person more, or one person wants to get married and the other person doesn't. Luckily, it didn't work out that way for us."

Talking about her celebrity status, she reveals: "Right after the show started airing every single week last season, things started changing, because now I can't go into a grocery store without being recognized. I can't go here or there unless I'm looking fit to kill, and I don't like to wear make-up, and I prefer wearing my hair in a ponytail.

"Do you sign autographs?"

"It depends," she says. "If I'm in a store to get something, I like to get it and leave-like a normal person. If I'm eating, I like to eat. If I'm at a stoplight, I like to continue when the light goes green. Mostly, though, I enjoy the visibility, because through my visibility I will be able to achieve a lot of things by my singing and writing."

Lynda Carter hesitates for a moment: she seems to be weighing thoughts. She makes a decision and her mood goes soft.

"I'm a reborn Christian," she states in 4 hushed voice, "and so, the Lord will give me ways of showing people and dealing with people in a really positive, beautiful way-without soap boxing, without hitting them over the head. It's a real source of joy for me. It's changed my life totally."

I inquire as to when this happened.

"Last Christmas. The Lord's been wanting me for a really long time. It is what I've been looking for my whole life. It's what my career didn't give me, that my husband didn't give me, that my seeking in a lot of different areas of metaphysics never gave me. It is a physiological change as well as a mental one-a change in my whole body, a feeling of being on fire.

"It's incredible! It's accepting Jesus Christ as your personal saviour, accepting that He did come down here and that He did die for the sins of the world. You accept Jesus as the Son of God and you give your life to Him. You don't have to give up anything. You just decide that you will let Him direct your life, that He will lead you. You read from the Bible.

You can have the water baptism or be baptized in the spirit. When you're baptized in the spirit, you actually have a feeling inside of you that's different. There is a God. There is, and He's real!"

Enthused now, she continues: "We are all rebellious. We all have a sinful nature. That's the way we are. If God is love, then He's understanding and forgiving. He's omnipotent. He was before and He is now and always will be. He made you and He made me. Through understanding the Word, all you have to do is ask. Ask Him to understand, to show you, and He'll come. You'll be shown. When I finally in my own heart-sat down and prayed, 'Lord, I have all these things and they don't mean anything to me. I want what You want for me, because these things are nothing and I am nothing.' It wasn't a humility trip-I felt it inside that money, fame, none of it really changed anything.

"I had accepted Jesus when I was fourteen, but I didn't know how much further it went in terms of the Holy Spirit. I kept looking and then running away. My sister had been reborn, and whenever I would talk to her, I would always feel so great, so good, so spirited, so fulfilled, so much love. It's a lot more than just emotions. It sets very well with my brain. I can have faith and all that, but things have got to prove out. All the things that are in the Bible that God said were going to happen, have happened. Everything in the Bible checks out. I have never been so happy!"

She holds out two pamphlets to me, saying: "They explain what's happening right now.

We were talking before about where my visibility helps. Sitting here right now being able to give you these two books-my visibility has allowed me to do that. It's like tilling the soil, putting back something from which I've taken so much. I've received so many things-I'm pretty, I'm wealthy, I'm talented. I have the gifts of being able to sing, dance, and act. I've worked hard for them, granted. I've been pounding the pavement, too. I've paid my dues. I'd just like to share the news with anybody who has an open mind and feels a little tugging like I used to. My sister would be talking to me and I'd wonder what I had to give up to get that."

"Do you feel God and religion interfere with your being a sex symbol?"

"I'm not a sex symbol," she declares, shaking her head. "I know I have a pretty body; I know I have a pretty face. But, for some reason, I don't get that. I don't wear clothes that are cut down to here. When I go out, I usually wear a blazer with a shirt. I don't ever wear my Wonder Woman costume when I make a personal appearance. That's what I do in the daytime; that's my work. I am a woman that has been blessed with physical beauty-I had nothing to do with it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and a woman's body is beautiful and made to be that way by God for reasons of procreation. It was meant to visually stimulate a man. That's why the Lord made us. That's why we're not animals with a lot of hair on our bodies. Where the wedge comes is between appreciation and exploitation."

What are your feelings on The Pill then?

Momentarily she seems confused. "I feel that anything of that nature that you put into your body is bad for you. Of course, now they're finding the hormones they give women are cancer-causing. I don't use The Pill for those reasons. I have always hated the idea of taking a pill every single day-I just couldn't handle it. I knew it had to be something bad. I thought at the time, if this little pill can keep me from conceiving, then there's gotta be something really harmful in it. I can't take it for those reasons.

"On the other hand," she says, waving her hands, "I wouldn't want to be having a baby at this particular time in history. The world is going crazy. Crazy! she emphasizes.

"Do you feel it's the end of the world? "

"As we know it" she concedes. "The world will cease to exist as we know it in the next ten years. I've always known that. There'll be a third World War. Everything that's happened so far is fulfilling prophecy and revelation. It's scary, but I'm not afraid."

"Has being 'reborn' changed your husband Ron's life as well?"

"He doesn't believe yet the way I believe. That's okay. He doesn't stop me from believing. He's for it. There are so many things that come out of it that are good. Before, there was Lucifer tugging at me, saying, 'You're going to have to give up something.' I'd tried many times. Now I just ask the Lord, 'Please make the change within me. You know, like I want to stop smoking or I want this."

Lynda Carter was recently voted "the most beautiful woman in the world" by a London-based beauty academy. It doesn't seem to mean much to her, though.

Quoting from the Bible on Eve and her apple, Lynda adds, "Women are always the downfall of men-manipulative little things."

"Do you actually believe that?"

"Oh, yes, I do," she says. "We are; I am. "

"Is that because of circumstances?"

"No, I think it's by nature. You can see it with any wife-they have their way. Men don't do that."

"How do you feel about the era?"

"I feel if you're doing the same job as somebody else, you should get equal pay. Also, you should have the opportunity to do that. On my crew, there's a female prop person, a female electrician. That's my standard deal " -use as many females as are qualified to do the job. That's just part of life, but everybody makes a big deal out of it."

She wants to " say something. "What?" I ask.

"I want to say something about Playboy magazine and Hugh Hefner. I really am against the way he has exploited, women and used them as monthly turn-ons." She launches into a newscaster imitation: "Okay, kids, here's something for your every perversion.' " She suddenly looks sad. "Using something beautiful-making it into something that's really ugly. I feel anger well up in me when I talk about it. I wish I could talk to some of the girls and help them to see that all that glitter is not gold. I wish they'd close up his house here. Just as we were talking about women being manipulative, a man can be abusive and insidiously so. Maybe that's the correct word for Hefner-insidious."

Lynda Carter's a half hour late for rehearsal. Her last words to me were at the door:

"The Lord's been preparing my heart for this for a long time. My life has changed so drastically. I've needed it and wanted it for so long that I wouldn't give it up for anything."