Ten years before Zoë Kravitz would star alongside Robert Pattinson in he Batman, she auditioned for another film of the Caped Crusader-- and was rejected.

Kravitz shared in an interview that initially she couldn't land even a small role in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. Kravitz claims she was told she was "too urban" for a Batman film. Even to this day, the actress says it was a difficult moment. She explains,

“Being a woman of color and being an actor and being told at that time that I wasn’t able to read lines 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."

The directions did not come from Nolan himself, as Kravitz believes it was "probably a casting director or a casting director’s assistant." Still, the racism behind the choice cannot be ignored, as Kravitz says,

“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?’"

Kravitz says that encounters like that affected her self esteem, making her self conscious of her skin color long into her career. When she was younger, she felt “uncomfortable with [her] blackness”, and even tried to alter her appearance.

“It took me a long time to not only accept it but to love it and want to scream it from the rooftops."

Kravitz now plays Catwoman in The Batman, which has gone on to gross the biggest opening weekend of any 2022 film.