”When people see the show, they will understand why this character is so important to me and why after reading the script, it was a no-brainer that I would happily spend as long as I’m allowed to playing this character, over trying to find new ones,” says Rose. She hadn’t yet seen the Batwoman pilot when she spoke with Adweek shortly after The CW’s upfront presentation last month, but says, “It’s very rare that something feels that special. And if it feels that special, it seems impossible that it couldn’t be special.”
That changed this spring when she filmed the Batwoman pilot, which was “exhausting and rewarding—and it’s not the kicking-butt side of things I’m talking about,” says Rose. Yes, in one scene she single-handedly takes on eight or nine assailants, but the episode also delves into Kane’s emotional backstory, filled with heartbreaking losses of family members and girlfriends. “There’s so much in it that I think friends, or me when I was younger, or fans, or anyone can watch and feel part of their story is being told,” she says.
During filming, “I would go home and I was exhausted, and everyone was like, ‘Oh, the stunts must be killing you.’” Rose says. “I’m like, ‘No, it’s from crying,’ and they’re like, ‘What? Isn’t it Batwoman?’ ‘I know. I’m as confused as you are!’” (Marvels Dries, “She can go from tough to vulnerable in the snap of your fingertips.”)
While taking on Batwoman and Kate Kane sounded like “a cool idea in theory” when producers reached out to Rose last summer, she approached the meeting with Dries and executive producer Sarah Schechter as “just an open conversation.” But once Rose heard their pitch, she was hooked.
Their vision for the role and the season “just transformed the entire conversation,” says Rose. Yes, the opportunity to play the first out-lesbian LGBTQ superhero in a live-action series “is amazing, but [it] still [has] to be done in a way that’s authentic and right, and feel good,” she explains. “The story they’re telling me is so much more in-depth, real, grounded, heartbreaking and wild than what I anticipated.”
Dries says that prior to Rose’s involvement, as she and the producers considered other contenders for the role, she had convinced herself that casting a heterosexual actor would be fine as long as Kate Kane remained gay and “super true to the comic.” But after Rose was cast, says Dries, “I was like, ‘Thank God we hired a gay actor to do this!’ That would have been such a mistake not to.”
That’s because Rose, like Dries, understood the importance of portraying Kate Kane’s same-sex relationships in a realistic—and, more important, matter-of-fact—manner. “There’s a way that television shows and films often depict any kind of new relationship when it’s a woman and a woman. It often has a beginning, middle and end that’s always the same,” explains Rose. “Like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re my best friend and we’re having a slumber party in high school!’ It’s fine, because that is a way that still represents and still speaks to a legitimate way that people get together in relationships. But it also feels like we have to do more explaining than when it’s just a heterosexual couple,” where viewers are routinely introduced to an on-screen relationship with little backstory.
In the series, Kane’s romantic relationships “are never going to be that explained. It’s just going to be like anybody else,” says Rose. “And that I love, because as much as I love representation in any way, shape or form, I don’t think I’ve seen it normalized as much as this.”
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