After years of anticipation, The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves, finally premiered in theaters on March 4 and fans got to see Robert Pattinson's Caped Crusader alongside Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman, played by Zoë Kravitz.
But this actually isn't the first time the actress wanted to appear in a Batman movie. According to The Observer, Kravitz tried to audition for the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises but was told she was too "urban."
"I don't know if it came directly from Chris Nolan," she told the newspaper in a new interview. "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 has opened up about the experience before, including in a 2015 interview with Nylon.
"In the last Batman movie [The Dark Knight Rises], they told me that I couldn't get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren't 'going urban,'" she told the magazine at the time. "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 wit chu?'"
E! News has reached out to Warner Bros. and Nolan for comment but has yet to hear back.
"At one point," Kravitz recalled to The Observer, "all the scripts that were being sent [to me] 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."
Over the years, the 33-year-old star has taken on a diverse assortment of film and TV roles, playing Angel Salvadore in X-Men: First Class, Christina in Divergent, Toast the Knowing in Mad Max: Fury Road and Bonnie Carlson in Big Little Lies.
Kravitz told The Observer that her parents, musician Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet, "broke down boundaries in a lot of ways," noting, "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." She also praised her grandmother Roxie Roker, who played Helen Willis on The Jeffersons.
When asked if her parents ever talked to her about racism before she started working in Hollywood, Kravitz replied, "They never warned me or anything. I think they were more 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."