Zoe Kravitz Remembers Being Called Too ‘Urban’ for The Dark Knight Rises Role: ‘Was Really Hard’

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07th Mar, 2022. 08:46 pm
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Zoe Kravitz claims she was turned down for a role in a previous Batman film due to the colour of her skin.

The 33-year-old actress, who plays Catwoman/Selina Kyle in the new film The Batman, told The Observer that she tried out for a role in the 2012 sequel The Dark Knight Rises but was turned down because she was deemed too “urban” for the role.

Christopher Nolan directed The Dark Knight Rises, which starred Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.

“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,” said Kravitz.

The star added that she has come to realize how to see the positive in rejections: “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.’ ”

She also told The Observer 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.”

“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 said, adding that her famous parents “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.”

Zoe Kravitz Remembers Being Called Too ‘Urban’ for The Dark Knight Rises Role: ‘Was Really Hard’

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