Other than The Joker, Catwoman is the Batman villain who’s been most represented cinematically over the decades, with Anne Hathaway most recently playing her in live-action in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. Having previously vocally cameoed as Catwoman in The LEGO Batman Movie, Zoe Kravitz is now making her live-action debut as the character in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, and Hathaway has just one piece of advice for her fellow actress regarding the role: don’t listen to any advice.
Seriously, as Anne Hathaway sees it, Zoe Kravitz needs to as much room as possible to make the Catwoman role her own and rather than trying to closely emulate a past iteration of the character. Here’s what Hathaway specifically said during a recent interview with Collider:
If I had any advice it would be literally don’t listen to anybody because I think the only way to play that role is to give your version of it. All of us had different directors and all of our interpretations were specific to the films that they were in, kind of like my Grand High Witch is specific to Bob Zemeckis and Angelica Huston’s is specific to Nicolas Roeg’s, and that’s great! And all the Jokers were specific to each director they have, and so I don’t think you can get too bogged down with the comparison. And especially when you’re not the one doing it because your job is to give yours. And I’m so excited to see what she does with it. I thought she was a perfect choice.
Anne Hathaway has a point. Each Batman film continuity has its own distinct feel, meaning that different takes on the characters populating it are called for. Lee Meriwether Catwoman from 1966’s Batman worked well within the campy world established by the Batman ’66 TV series, Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman suitably fitted director Tim Burton’s gothic sensibilities in Batman Returns, and Hathaway’s Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises was appropriately grounded for Christopher Nolan’s hyper-realistic approach to the Batman lore. Oh yeah, and there’s also Halle Berry’s Catwoman, but the less said about that version of the character, the better.
Now the time has come for The Batman, which began filming at the beginning of this year, then had to take pause for about half a year due to the pandemic, and is now deep back into principal photography. So naturally, Zoe Kravitz already had plenty of time to prepare to play Catwoman and has shot various scenes, and Anne Hathaway is confident that Kravitz will do great things with the character. That being said, Kravitz admitted earlier in the year, that she drew inspiration from Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman and also read Batman: Year One, so it’s not like she’s working off an entirely blank slate.
Specific details about what to expect from Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman in The Batman are still rather light, although as shown in the trailer released at DC FanDome, she’s already jumped into a thieving lifestyle. Rather than being a true antagonist like Riddler and Penguin, it seems like Catwoman, whose real name is Selina Kyle, will be more of an antiheroine nuisance/possible later ally to Robert Pattinson’s Batman. It also looks like in this continuity, Selina could be the daughter of crime boss Carmine Falcone.
You can see Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman in action when The Batman swoops into theaters on March 4, 2022. And for the Anne Hathaway fans out there, she can currently be seen in The Witches remake playing on HBO Max.
