Washington: Gotham has a new hero! Actor Ruby Rose, who plays Kate Kane in the new American TV series ‘Batwoman’, spoke about her new stint revealing why it’s so meaningful to her.
The show is already making history as it is the TV’s first superhero series led by an openly gay character, reported E! News.
For Rose, the role is especially meaningful and in a recent interview, she explained the reason behind the significance of her new part.
“Everyone wants to play a superhero,” she told Emmy magazine, as cited by E! News.
“Batwoman, in particular, means so much to me because she’s so comfortable within her sexuality. It’s a character that I wish I could have seen on television growing up. It’s time. It’s time to have a gay superhero,” she added.
The actor started her career at the age of 7 with modelling and commercial work. While she was studying acting and cinema in college, she landed a job as a VJ for MTV Australia. Although hosting was a great gig, she knew she wanted to return to her passion. So, she moved to the United States to pursue acting.
“I packed up everything and came to the States with, like, two suitcases. And I didn’t get anything for two years. Couldn’t get a manager, couldn’t get an agent, could not get an audition,” she recalled.
Despite all the hard times, she remained hopeful to make her dreams come true and created a short film titled ‘Break Free’. Rose explained that the film allowed her to express herself, a welcomed change considering she had been encouraged to wear her hair long and appear, as she put it, “very feminine” for her previous jobs.
“This is how I looked, and this was the freedom I felt when I changed that to suit how I felt on the inside, and what made me feel confident, what made me feel strong, and what made me feel like myself,” she told the magazine.
“In my mind, it was me representing the spectrum [of gender], and I sit somewhere on that spectrum at any given time,” the actor added.
The short film went viral and was seen by ‘Orange Is the New Black’s’ casting director Jennifer Euston. Rose landed a role on the famous Netflix show and after that, she appeared in a number of films, including ‘Pitch Perfect 3’ and ‘John Wick: Chapter 2’. When she got the call for Batwoman, she knew she couldn’t turn it down the role.
“We were discussing how desperately the world needs something like this right now,” Rose said.
“You have executive producer Sarah Schechter and showrunner Caroline Dries, who’s a gay woman and Greg Berlanti, who handled these situations so well in the past and is a beautiful gay man, and they were explaining to me this wasn’t going to be a project that was just written by men,” she added.
Dries wasn’t concerned about having Batwoman be played by someone who is gay.
“And then after we cast Ruby, I was like, ‘Thank God, we got a lesbian’. Her being out and so comfortable is part of what makes her pop in general, and what makes her pop as an actor. That has helped skyrocket her career in the best of ways, and that’s obviously what put her on our radar,” she said. “
However, not everyone was thrilled about the decision. In fact, some fans questioned if Rose could pull off the part.
“I’ve confused people by saying that I fit in on a genderless spectrum,” Rose said.
“I didn’t know it was going to be quite as big of statement at the time. It kind of clashes with the idea of being a lesbian if I don’t identify as a woman all the time, which I do–I identify as a woman. But I don’t like any of the labels, to be perfectly honest,” she added.
“I don’t even like the letters of the acronym LGBTQI so much. I want everyone to be human, be accepted for being human. But until that happens, I entirely understand and stand behind why each letter is important to each different part of the community,” she concluded.