The Batman actress Zoë Kravitz recently claimed that she was rejected from a role in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises film due to her skin color.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Guardian, Kravitz discussed rejection and the advice she received from her mother, Lisa Bonet.
She would tell The Guardian, “Even though it’s sometimes hard to see that in the moment, usually a few years later, you’re like, OK, this is why this didn’t happen.”
Specifically, she would reveal she was rejected from a role in Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises telling the British outlet, “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…”
She added, “Being a woman of colour and being an actor and being told at that time that I wasn’t able to read because of the colour of my skin, and the word urban being thrown around like that, that was what was really hard about that moment.”
Not only did she claim she was rejected from a role in The Dark Knight Rises, but she also claimed that “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,” she stated.
RELATED: The Batman Star Zoë Kravitz Says Her Version Of Catwoman Is Bisexual
Kravitz would go on to accuse people who lived near the set location of Big Little Lies as racists. She told The Guardian, “There were a few moments where I felt a little uncomfortable because it is such a white area.”
She then explained what made her uncomfortable, “Just weird racist people in bars and things like that.”
The Catwoman actress would also discuss her own heritage and that she had trouble with her own identity when she was younger.
Kravitz would say, “I felt really insecure about my hair, relaxing it, putting chemicals in it, plucking my eyebrows really thin. 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 added.
RELATED: The Batman Actress Zoe Kravitz Doesn’t Want Catwoman Fetishized Or Stereotyped
She explains that one of the moments that brought this change in her was “realising what it meant for my grandmother to get a job on The Jeffersons, and be a Black woman on TV, and what it meant for her to be in a biracial relationship on television.”
Kravitz relayed, “And to hear stuff that my mother tells me about being a biracial girl in the 1970s, and being abused or being spit on, and what that felt like, you know?”
She would that her parents “never warned me or anything. I think they were more focused on trying to make sure I understood that despite the colour of my skin I should be able to act or dress or do whatever it is I want to do.”
Kravitz stars as Catwoman in The Batman. The film has currently earned $134 million at the domestic box office and $124.2 million internationally for a worldwide gross of $258.2 million.
What do you make of her accusations of racism and her claim that she was rejected from Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rising because of her skin color?