She may be the star of the new Batman movie, but once upon a time, Zoë Kravitz was denied a role in the franchise because of her skin colour.
On Tuesday, the actress, who plays Catwoman in the new film “The Batman”, took to her Instagram Story to clarify comments she made in an interview in which she revealed she had wanted to audition for 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises”, but was told she was too “urban.”
“I was NOT told I was too urban to play Catwoman in ‘The Dark Knight [Rises]’,” she explained. “I wanted to AUDITION for a small part in the film and was told (I do not know who said this but this is how it was worded to me ) that they were not going ‘urban’ on the part. This is something I heard a lot 10 years ago — it was a very different time.”
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Kravtiz had originally shared the anecdote in an interview with The Observer, recalling being turned down for an audition in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy capper.
“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,” she recalled. “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,”
She added, “Even though it’s sometimes hard to see that in the moment, usually a few years later, you’re like, ‘Okay, this is why this didn’t happen.’ ”
Kravitz also talked about her desire to star in movies that aren’t just about her race, explaining that “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.”
She added that her parents Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet “broke down boundaries in a lot of ways” as 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.”
“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,” Kravitz said, adding that her parents both “focused on trying to make sure I understood that despite the colour of my skin I should be able to act or dress or do whatever it is I want to do.”
