Zoe Kravitz deserves a lot of credit for The Batman’s success. I don’t know how she does in the film because I haven’t seen it yet, but I know a shift in studio strategy, and Warner Bros absolutely began leaning into “the cat and the bat” strategy to sell the movie several months ago. Zoe and Rob did press together, they flirted with each other, they didn’t bring their significant others to the premieres and it worked. It really didn’t work at all between Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway back in 2012. Speaking of, apparently Zoe tried to audition for Catwoman in Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, but she was told she was too “urban” for the role. Sheesh. That’s not even a dog whistle, that’s just racist AF. Zoe spoke about that and more with the Guardian:

Getting into character as Catwoman: She watched videos of big cats and gradually adopted their physical attributes. “It was fun to play with different ways of walking, of being agile. You know, you can’t read cats, which is why a lot of people feel uncomfortable around them.” Kravitz conceptualised Kyle as someone who is “tough, a street-smart person. Her life has been really difficult and she’s figured out a way to survive this far and take care of herself, and she really cares about other people in similar situations.”

Whether training hard for the role triggered her disordered eating: “No, actually. I was focused on being strong versus being thin. It’s a physical part. I wanted to make sure it felt believable that she was physically capable of doing all the things she was doing. I was actually stronger and more healthy than I’ve been in a long time.”

On her parents: “They both dealt with being artists who didn’t act or dress or look or sound the way a Black person was supposed to act in terms of what white people specifically were comfortable with.” But growing up between LA and Miami, and later in Manhattan, Kravitz sometimes felt uncomfortable with her heritage as a biracial woman. “I felt really insecure about my hair, relaxing it, putting chemicals in it, plucking my eyebrows really thin. I was uncomfortable with my blackness. It took me a long time to not only accept it but to love it and want to scream it from the rooftops.”

She turns down scripts where it’s all about race: “At one point, all the scripts that were being sent were about the first Black woman to make a muffin or something. Even though those stories are important to tell, I also want to open things up for myself as an artist.”

On Big Little Lies: Kravitz believes the reason her character in the HBO blockbuster Big Little Lies was so multi-layered is, in part, because “it was originally written for a white person.” When on location for Big Little Lies in California, “There were a few moments where I felt a little uncomfortable,” she says, “because it is such a white area.” I ask her to elaborate. “Just weird racist people in bars and things like that.”

Being rejected for a Catwoman audition in 2012: In 2012, Kravitz attempted to audition for the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises, but was told she was too “urban” for the role. “I don’t know if it came directly from Chris Nolan. I think it was probably a casting director of some kind, or a casting director’s assistant… Being a woman of colour and being an actor and being told at that time that I wasn’t able to read because of the colour of my skin, and the word urban being thrown around like that, that was what was really hard about that moment.”

[From The Guardian]

What’s striking about the 2012 story is that it doesn’t sound like they even allowed her to audition for the role!! Think about that. I remember when Nolan was casting for Catwoman back in 2011, and while Anne Hathaway was considered the biggest contender, Nolan did audition various actresses for the role, and tons of young actresses were trying to get in the room. I don’t know how many actresses Nolan saw, but now I wonder if he even bothered to audition any Black actresses. Zoe would have been about 22/23 at the time and she didn’t have a long CV, which would arguably be better excuses for why Nolan didn’t audition her – she was too young and too green for such an important role. So who came up with “she’s too urban”? Jesus.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.