A new Catwoman. Zoë Kravitz takes over as the latest version of Selina Kyle in The Batman, but this cat doesn’t just have eyes for bats.
The Warner Bros. film introduces Kravitz, 33, as a young burglar who is just trying to find her missing roommate, Anika. Selina calls her “baby” in the film, which potentially hints that they’re not strictly platonic. However, Anika is only referred to as Selina’s “friend” in the movie.
When Kravitz was directly asked whether Catwoman is bisexual, the Big Little Lies actress confirmed that she assumed Selina and Anika were more than friends.
“That’s definitely the way I interpreted that, that they had some kind of romantic relationship,” Kravitz told Australian outlet Pedestrian.
The High Fidelity alum agreed with the interviewer that it was great to see the character’s bisexuality included on the big screen for the first time.
Director and cowriter Matt Reeves, however, revealed that he wasn’t necessarily thinking about Catwoman as being queer.
“So I don’t think we meant to go directly in that way, but you can interpret it that way for sure,” he told Pedestrian in a separate interview with the Aussie website. “[Catwoman] has an intimacy with that character [Anika], 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.”
Reeves, 55, added, “[The film is] very true to the character of Selina Kyle. She’s not yet Catwoman, but all the elements of how she’s going to become Catwoman are there.”
Catwoman has been explicitly identified as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community in the DC Comics source material since 2015 when writer Genevieve Valentine confirmed decades of speculation in Catwoman #39.
“There were a few emotional beats I considered indispensable … And one was establishing Selina as canon bisexual,” Valentine wrote in a blog post after the issue was published. “She’s flirted around it – often quite literally – for years now; for me, this wasn’t a revelation so much as a confirmation.”
Valentine added, “Please be assured that Selina’s longstanding connection to Batman has not been forgotten; that is not how bisexuality (or humanity) works.”
The same can be said for Kravitz’s movie character. The Batman follows a young Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson), now in the second year of his vigilante career, as he crosses paths with Selina while investigating a crime in Gotham — and the chemistry between the superheroes is palpable.
The Batman will release in theaters on Friday, March 4.
