Zoë Kravitz Talks Auditioning for Small Part In 'Dark Knight Rises'

Zoë Kravitz said she wanted to audition for 'The Dark Knight Rises', but was denied because the casting team wasn't 'going urban'.

Hulu executives aren't the only people that Zoë Kravitz is going after. In new interview with The Observer, The Batman actress opened up about wanting to auditioning for a small, undisclosed part in 2012 Christopher Nolan-directed film The Dark Knight Rises, where the casting team allegedly said weren't choosing a Black person for the part.

“I don’t know if it came directly from Chris Nolan,” Kravitz said. “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.”

Kravitz also spoke about the audition in a 2015 NYLON article, sharing that she auditioned for a smaller part in the film, also mentioning that the team wasn't "going urban" for the role.

“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 with you?’”

But Kravitz eventually had the last laugh. In October 2019, she was casted as Selina Kyle/Catwoman in Matt Reeves-directed The Batman, playing the object of Batman/Bruce Wayne's (Robert Pattinson) affections. Kravitz told Observer that “it was crazy” when it was revealed that she was casted, adding “my phone was blowing up more than any birthday I’ve ever had.”

In a new update on her Instagram Stories, Kravitz clarified the comments she made in The Guardian article, telling people to "calm down".

“I was NOT told I was too urban to play Catwoman in the ‘Dark Knight [Rises]’. It would have made NO sense for me to even be considered for that role at that time,” Kravitz wrote. “I wanted to AUDITION for a small part in the film and was told (I do not know who said this, but this was how it was worded to me) that they were not going ‘urban’ on the part. This is something I heard a lot 10 years ago — it was a very different time," she said. “I did not mention this to point any fingers or make anyone seem racist, namely Chris Nolan, the film’s producers or anyone on the casting team, because I truly do not believe anyone meant any harm. I was simply giving an example of what it was like to be a woman of color in this industry at that time."

Over its opening weekend, The Batman topped the box office at $128 million worldwide.

This story was updated on Wednesday, March 9th.