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Ruby Rose Gets Emotional About Batwoman Casting
Ruby Rose has now publicly spoken about the very personal nature of her experience being cast as Kate Kane aka. Batwoman in The CW's Arrowverse. The actor is currently making the press rounds promoting the Jason Statham-anchored giant shark thriller The Meg, in which she plays a supporting role.
The recording artist, DJ, model, and actor Rose has gradually made a bigger name for herself in film and television over the last three years. After her performance as Litchfield inmate Stella Carlin in Netflix's Orange is the New Black, Rose played smaller roles in the 2017 franchise sequels Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and xXx: Return of Xander Cage. Rose then tackled what is arguably her most memorable film role to date - that of the mute assassin Ares in John Wick: Chapter 2 - and later appeared in Pitch Perfect 3, before making the jump to begin cast as a full-fledged DC superhero for the small screen.
Rose's casting as Batwoman was formally announced by The CW this past Tuesday, August 7, ahead of the character's Arrowverse's debut later this year, in the shared DC TV universe's annual fall crossover. Naturally, the subject later came up during Rose's interview to promote The Meg on The Tonight Show the day after. Rose was openly emotional when she spoke about her casting as the proudly-gay Kate Kane, as well as the responsibility that she feels taking on the role - having come out as a lesbian when she was 12 years old:
“I feel like the reason I keep getting so emotional is because, you know, growing up watching TV, I never saw somebody on TV that I could identify with, let alone a superhero, you know. I’ve always had this saying, well, not me, Oscar Wilde, which is ‘Be yourself because everyone else is taken’ and so I always lived by that motto and then the second motto is when I came into the industry was ‘Be the person you needed when you were younger.'”
Arrowverse co-architect Greg Berlanti (who is openly gay himself) and his fellow producers on the TV franchise have taken steps to make The CW's world of superheroes increasingly inclusive in recent years, when it comes to race, gender, and sexuality alike. Berlanti and his collaborators have done the same with their non-Arrowverse projects on the network of late, having just introduced Nafessa Williams as the gay superhero Anissa Pierce aka. Thunder on Black Lightning near the beginning of this year. Rose touched on the importance of this approach to LGBTQ+ youth on The Tonight Show, noting that “Kids [can] watch this growing up and relate to it and feel empowered and think that they can become a superhero.”
Similarly, her appearance as Batwoman in the upcoming Arrowverse crossover should give Rose the chance to shine in the spotlight in a way that she hasn't gotten to, during her movie and small screen appearances past. The actual Batwoman TV show's pilot is currently being written by Caroline Dries (The Vampire Diaries), so there's no guarantee that it will be ordered to series just yet. However, based on Berlanti's track record at the network, there's certainly fair reason to assume the show will be picked up by The CW in the foreseeable future - and, in the process, make Rose a central part of the Arrowverse at large.
