Zoe Kravitz revealed that in the new Batman movie, she interpreted her character, Selina Kyle, a.k.a Catwoman, as bisexual.
In the Pedestrian interview, Matt Galea, who was interviewing Kravitz, noted a line in which Catwoman calls her female roommate “baby”, and asks if that’s an implication of more romantic feelings between the two women.
“Kravitz replied, “That’s definitely the way I interpreted that, that they had some kind of romantic relationship.”
Kravitz’s casting is a win for representation because, while Selina Kyle is conically bisexual in the DC comic universe, the character has never been portrayed on film by a bisexual actress; aside from the 2017 Lego batman movie, where Kravitz also voiced Catwoman. This same sentiment was expressed in the Pedestrian interview, to which Kravitz simply replied “I agree”.
Even though the actress interprets the character as bisexual, the director clears up that there will be no blatant scenes in the movie identifying the character as queer. The director, Matt Reeves, told Pedestrian that he saw the two character’s relationship as more “maternal”.
“In terms of her relationship with Anika, I spoke to Zoe very early on and one of the things she said to me that I loved was that: ‘She’s drawn to strays because she was a stray and so she really wants to care for these strays… Anika is like a stray and she loves her’”, though he made it clear he is not against the interpretation of the character as bisexual.
As this movie works as an “origin story” or Selina Kyle, as Kravitz puts it in the interview, there is a chance that in later iterations, this side of the character could be explored.
While this may not be a complete portrayal of a bisexual black woman in big cinema, it’s a step in the right direction to have the actress match the character.
Batman is set to hit theaters on Friday, March 4th, 2022.
