Was Zoe Kravitz denied an audition for the Dark Knight Rises because she was too “urban”?
According to the 26-year-old singer-actress, she learned the hard way, that in Hollywood, her look isn’t always what the casting agents have in mind.
“In the last Batman movie, they told me that I couldn’t get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren’t ‘going urban,’ ” Kravitz told Nylon mag about trying to get a role in The Dark Knight Rises, which hit the big screen in 2012. “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?’ ”
As you can imagine, this was a blow to Kravitz, who in the past admits she used to compartmentalize so-called White and Black culture when she was a child.
“I identified with White culture, and I wanted to fit in,” she said about being one of the few Black kids in a predominantly White school. “I didn’t identify with Black culture, like, I didn’t like Tyler Perry movies, and I wasn’t into hip-hop music. I liked Neil Young.”
So she gets where the filmmakers’ assumption was coming from — a misguided place.
“Black culture is so much deeper than that,” the Mad Max: Fury Road actress told Nylon, “but unfortunately that is what’s fed through the media. That’s what people see. That’s what I saw. But then I got older and listened to A Tribe Called Quest and watched films with Sidney Poitier, and heard Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. I had to un-brainwash myself. It’s my mission, especially as an actress.”
Regardless of the snub, Kravitz’s career has certainly come a long way since 2012. She can be seen in X-Men: First Class, the Divergent franchise and her latest project, Dope. She also had a recurring role on the Showtime series “Californication.”
