Zo? Kravitz talks sweaty first day on 'Batman' set, breaking the ice with Robert Pattinson
Zo? Kravitz has come a long way with her martial arts moves, from breaking boards when she was 7 to trying to break Robert Pattinson's face.
In the superhero movie "The Batman" (in theaters now), Kravitz stars as Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) opposite Pattinson as Gotham City's Dark Knight. In director Matt Reeves’ film, Bruce Wayne is just in his second year of trying to clean up crime in his corrupt hometown, and Selina isn’t what we all know as the iconic “Catwoman” yet – though she has plenty of feline companions hanging around her apartment.
One line encapsulates everything Kravitz needed to know about Selina: When Batman stops by for a visit and turns into Captain Obvious, noting that she has a lot of cats, Selina purrs, “Yeah, I have a thing about strays.”
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“I really wanted to get into the psychology of what that meant versus just having the cats because she's Catwoman,” Kravitz says. “Learning about her history and where she comes from and her feeling like a stray herself and really wanting to pay it forward and take other strays in, whether they be actual cats or people, that's really her life's mission.”
When she’s not being a cat burglar, Selina works as a waitress at the Iceberg Lounge club – run by the Penguin (Colin Farrell), a lieutenant to Mob boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) – when she strikes up a kinship with Batman. She wants his help finding a friend who has vanished, he needs assistance tracking down the serial killer Riddler (Paul Dano), and their cat-and-mouse dynamic finds them growing closer while each are on a mission seeking justice for the past.
Their initial meeting, however, is a throwdown in the mayor's mansion. "It was interesting to have to establish our relationship without a lot of words," Kravitz says of the fight scene on her first day on the set.
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"To do flirtation whilst simultaneously being kicked in the head. That’s a relationship!" her co-star Pattinson exclaims.
"And Rob sweating all over me. That was sexy, I loved it,” she deadpans, playfully rolling her eyes.
But that scene also offered a pinch-me moment for Kravitz: “I’m Catwoman and we're on set and it's on film and you can't stop me now!”
Jeffrey Wright, Kravitz’s co-star who plays Gotham cop Jim Gordon, says she’s “striking” in the role and brings “a kind of mercurial energy about her that is very fitting, very feline for this. She's got a danger about her, and a mystery.”
Kravitz, the daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, grew up a Catwoman fan and dabbled in taekwondo. (Fun fact: Robert Alonzo, supervising stunt coordinator on “The Batman,” was her instructor.) Was she any good back in the day? “Not great,” she says. “I could break a board. I remember doing that and thinking that was really cool.”
She was first exposed to Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman from the 1960s TV series “Batman” and recalls “obviously just being attracted to seeing a Black woman in that kind of a show. My grandmother would talk about her.” And when she was a little older, Kravitz appreciated the “cool performance” Michelle Pfeiffer gave as Catwoman in 1992’s “Batman Returns.”
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This isn’t even Kravitz’s first rodeo as the character: She played an animated Catwoman in 2017’s “The Lego Batman Movie.” (Her big line: “Meow-meow, we’re in, meow-meow!”) But she acknowledges it’s “a really big responsibility” to take on a live-action role inhabited by everyone from Julie Newmar to Anne Hathaway.
“It's very rare that you get to play a character that really brings out your inner child,” Kravitz says. She has a Selina action figure on display in her house and gets a kick out of seeing herself on “The Batman” posters. “People come up to me and say, “That's Catwoman. Isn't that crazy?” I'm like, ‘Yeah. It's so crazy.' I don't know if I'll ever get comfortable with the fact that this is the reality."
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Instead of taking a break after filming “The Batman,” Kravitz put on another mask – the kind used to avoid COVID-19 rather than to burgle rich people – for Steven Soderbergh’s new Hitchcockian thriller “Kimi” (now streaming on HBO Max).
Later this year, she films her directorial debut “Pussy Island,” starring Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum (whom Kravitz is dating), and before that she hosts “Saturday Night Live” for the first time on March 12.
“I’m terrified. Wish me luck,” Kravitz quips with a smile about her "SNL" gig. “I’m attracted to fear. When something is scary, that usually means you should do it.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Batman': Catwoman Zoe Kravitz, Robert Pattinson dueled on Day 1
