Report: Zoë Kravitz Told She Was ‘Too Urban’ for ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Audition

Though she played Catwoman in The Batman, actress Zoë Kravitz was once reportedly told she could not audition for 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises for being “too urban.”

Speaking with the Observer, the daughter of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz said she was denied a starring turn in Christopher Nolan’s trilogy for quasi-racist reasons, though she doubted the order came from Christopher Nolan himself.

“I don’t know if it came directly from Chris Nolan,” she told the outlet. “I think it was probably a casting director of some kind, or a casting director’s assistant.”

Kravitz, who did not specify the role she had been shut out from would have been in her early-20s at the time of the audition. Actress Anne Hathaway was cast in the role of Selina Kyle/Catwoman. Kravitz said the snub still stings a little.

“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,” she said.

Kravitz said she drew a lot of strength from her parents when getting rejected.

“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,” Kravitz said, noting that her parents were “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.”

Kravitz said she originally felt insecure about her race until she became more comfortable over time.

“I felt really insecure about my hair, relaxing it, putting chemicals in it, plucking my eyebrows really thin,” she said. “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.”

Despite that, Kravitz said she wants to keep pursuing roles that transcend racial boundaries.

“At one point, all the scripts that were being sent were about the first Black woman to make a muffin or something,” she said. “Even though those stories are important to tell, I also want to open things up for myself as an artist.”

Leading up the release of The Batman, Kravitz said she interpreted her character, Selina Kyle, as bisexual based on a scene in which she calls her friend Anika “baby” during a meeting at her apartment.

“That’s definitely the way I interpreted that, that they had some kind of romantic relationship,” she said.

Director Matt Reeves said that audiences were welcome to interpret the character that way if they wanted.

“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 said.