The Batman actress Zoë Kravitz says she interpreted her version of Catwoman in the upcoming superhero film as bisexual, according to reports.
First introduced in 1940, Catwoman has been variously portrayed as a Batman villain, a sometimes love interest, an on again-off again ally, and has been portrayed by close to a dozen actresses on film and animation, of which Kravitz is the latest as director Matt Reeves’ The Batman hits theaters this weekend.
In an interview with Pedestrian.tv, Kravitz insists that she has “interpreted” the Catwoman character as bisexual because in her alter ego as Selina Kyle, she lives with another woman.
In one early scene of the movie, for instance, Kyle calls out to her “friend” Anika and calls her “baby” during a meeting in Kyle’s apartment. Kravitz says that this scene implies that Kyle and Anika are sexually involved.
Still, while the relationship with Anika is only hinted at in the new film, Kyle/Catwoman’s sexual attraction to Batman (Robert Pattinson) is more explicit as in many of the scenes in which they appear, they heat up the screen with an intense passion and verbal foreplay.
Despite the heat with Batman, Kravitz insists that her Catwoman is a member of the LGBTQ community, saying of the scene with Anika, “That’s definitely the way I interpreted that, that they had some kind of romantic relationship.”
Still, the director of the film, Matt Reeves, demurred from outright characterizing Catwoman as bisexual, though he added that he did not mind it if fans decided to interpret it that way.
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“So I don’t think we meant to go directly in that way, but you can interpret it that way for sure. She has an intimacy with that character and it’s a tremendous and deep caring for that character, more so than a sexual thing, but there was meant to be quite an intimate relationship between them,” Reeves told the media.
Whether Catwoman is bisexual or not, LGBTQ characters are becoming increasingly more common in superhero fare. An openly gay character appeared in Avengers: Endgame in 2019, Marvel introduced a gay main hero in Eternals, Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie in the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder will be bisexual, and in its Loki streaming series, Marvel determined that Tom Hiddleston’s lead character is bisexual.
Television has taken inclusion of gay characters even farther. Every single one of the CW superhero shows have had lesbian characters, and Supergirl featured a transgender hero.
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