Catwoman is taking on a new life in The Batman, according to Zoë Kravitz.
In a recent interview with Australia's Pedestrian, the 33-year-old actress opened up about her approach to the character in the new superhero flick, sharing that she had "interpreted" the famed anti-heroine as bisexual. The revelation came when interviewer Matt Galea questioned Kravitz about one particular scene in which Selina Kyle/Catwoman calls her roommate Anika her "baby" and asked if the affectionate term meant the two women were more than just platonic friends.
"That's definitely the way I interpreted that, that they had some kind of romantic relationship," Kravitz said. After Galea expressed it was about time Catwoman, who is depicted as a bisexual woman in the comics, is finally portrayed as such onscreen, she added, "I agree."
However, The Batman director Matt Reeves had a different take on the relationship. He told Pedestrian that the film stays "very true" to the character of Selina Kyle in that "elements of how she's going to become Catwoman are there," but said Kravitz's onscreen character may not necessarily be queer.
"In terms of her relationship with Anika, I spoke to Zoë very early on and one of the things she said which I loved was that: ‘She's drawn to strays because she was a stray and so she really wants to care for these strays because she doesn't want to be that way anymore and Anika is like a stray and she loves her,'" he explained, adding that Anika "represents this connection that she has to her mother who she lost."
While Reeves does not think the story "meant to go directly in that way", he noted that "you can interpret it that way for sure."
He added of Selina's relationship with Anika, "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."
Starring Robert Pattinson as the titular vigilante, The Batman centers around the Caped Crusader in his second year of fighting crime in Gotham City. In addition to Catwoman, the movie also sees iconic foils such as Penguin (Colin Farrell) and The Riddler (Paul Dano).
Pattinson, 35, previously told Variety that auditioning for The Batman was "maybe craziest thing I've ever done" in terms of his Hollywood career.
"I put it on. I remember saying to Matt, ‘It does feel quite transformative!' He was like, ‘I would hope it does! You're literally in the Batsuit,'" he recalled, adding that he "immediately" felt "very powerful."
Despite the transformation being "pretty astonishing," the Twilight alum noted that getting the actual suit was "incredibly difficult to get into, so the ritual of getting into it is pretty humiliating."
He quipped, "You've got five people trying to shove you into something. Once you've got it on, it's like, ‘Yeah, I feel strong, I feel tough, even though I had to have someone squeezing my butt cheeks into the legs.'"