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Here's why 'The Batman' star Zoë Kravitz improvised a key line in the film
The Kimi star knew there had to be some reason why Selina Kyle had all those cats.
When you're playing Catwoman, Zoë Kravitz knows that it is worth exploring why the DC character is the way she is.
With The Batman finally arriving in theaters in March, SYFY WIRE had the chance to see an early screening of the hotly-anticipated blockbuster and attend a Q&A session with director and co-writer Matt Reeves, as well as the Bat and the Cat themselves, stars Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz.
The conversation ran the gamut, from talks about what characters Reeves and Pattinson would be interested in seeing in potential sequels, to how the upcoming film is an origin story for Batman's Rogues Gallery. The discussion also touched on how the actors brought key scenes to life, including one very memorable bit of dialogue for Catwoman.
“There were certain things that are some of my favorite moments or lines in the movie and they're yours,” Reeves said to Kravitz during the panel discussion.
One of those moments was a scene shown in the trailer, where Selina Kyle, surrounded by her cats, tells Batman that she has a thing for strays.
“When I read the script, it says that she has all these cats and that I understood that that was to tip-off the audience — she's Catwoman,” Kravtiz shared. “But I really wanted to understand why.”
Kravitz talked with Reeves about Selina’s backstory, which ultimately led to the exchange between Batman and Catwoman that made it into the final trailer. “This notion of the background that [Selina] comes from and what her life was … that she was collecting cats because now she's decided she's going to protect strays,” Reeves recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, I love this idea!’”
Reeves and Kravitz agreed to include the line, and Kravitz also provided Batman's setup for the line’s delivery, where Bruce Wayne's masked vigilante asks Selina why she has so many feline friends. “The delivery of that line, I think, is genius,” Reeves said, complimenting Pattinson.
For that scene and many others in the movie, Pattinson had his work cut out for him in trying to be emotive in full Bat costume.
“The point was to make his emotions be visible through the cowl, and we had no idea how hard it was going to be,” Reeves said about Pattinson’s caped character. “There were times when I would come to Rob [Pattinson] and go, ‘Okay, great — I just need to feel a little more,’ and he’d be like, ‘More? I’m about to burst a vein!’”
Pattinson was so sure he was overacting in the cowl that, one day, Reeves had the actor go behind the camera to watch a take of his performance.
“That was maybe the worst day of the whole shoot because I really genuinely thought it was [Reeves] that was wrong,” Pattinson added. “I was like: 'How can we be doing all these takes?' And [Reeves] was like, ‘Just come and look at it.’ And I was looking at it like, ‘Wow, there’s nothing happening.’”
Reeves and Pattinson overcame the cowl challenges, however, and we’ll be able to see Batman and his many moods when The Batman hits theaters March 4.
