Seems like this Catwoman got the last laugh.
Pretty much everyone is raving about Zoë Kravitz’s role in The Batman, starring opposite Robert Pattinson. It’s certainly her biggest role yet, but she’s always been a megastar in our eyes. Unfortunately, being the child of two huge celebs (Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz) and being super talented in her own right didn’t save her from the Hollywood discrimination.
Back in 2015, she revealed to Nylon that she wasn’t even allowed to audition for The Dark Knight Rises due to what sounds like thinly-veiled racism. She told the outlet:
“In the last Batman movie, they told me that I couldn’t get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren’t ‘going urban.’ It was like, ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I have to play the role like, ‘Yo, what’s up, Batman? What’s going on wit chu?’”
WTF? Also, you’re telling us Gotham isn’t diverse?? Please!
At the end of the day, we’re glad she wasn’t cast in a smaller role in that Batman so she could go on to star in this Batman. But how does she feel about the snub looking back? In an interview with The Observer, she reflected:
“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 color and being an actor and being told at that time that I wasn’t able to read because of the color of my skin, and the word urban being thrown around like that, that was what was really hard about that moment.”
As sad as it is, the 33-year-old is used to working around Hollywood’s narrow expectations for women of color (and women in general). Even her iconic character in Big Little Lies “was originally written for a white person,” and filming that breakout role in Monterey, California, had its downsides. She explained:
“There were a few moments where I felt a little uncomfortable because it is such a white area. … Just weird racist people in bars and things like that.”
On the other hand, she was also wary of being typecast because of her race. She revealed:
“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.”
However, coming from Black Hollywood royalty (besides her parents, her paternal grandmother Roxie Roker lead the groundbreaking sitcom The Jeffersons), the High Fidelity alum knew the pitfalls of the industry better than most. She shared with the outlet a “turning point” in loving and accepting her own Blackness:
“ what it meant for my grandmother to get a job on The Jeffersons, and be a Black woman on TV, and what it meant for her to be in a biracial relationship on television. And to hear stuff that my mother tells me about being a biracial girl in the 1970s, and being abused or being spit on, and what that felt like, you know?”
As to whether her parents explicitly prepared her to encounter this kind of racism in the entertainment business, Zoë said:
“They never warned me or anything. I think they were more focused on trying to make sure I understood that despite the color of my skin I should be able to act or dress or do whatever it is I want to do.”
Amen!
We hate to think about Zoë dealing with all that coming up in Hollywood, but we hope it makes her current successes all the sweeter. We can’t wait to see what comes next for her!
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