Australian actress Ruby Rose will play the lesbian iteration of Batwoman for The CW television network. The character will be the first openly gay superhero in a live action series.
She will first appear in a crossover episode in December between four DC shows on The CW: The Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl. The network is also developing a standalone series on Batwoman, which is looking to get picked up for 2019-20.
The series will follow the life of Kate Kane alias Batwoman, as “she soars onto the streets of Gotham as Batwoman, an out lesbian and highly trained street fighter primed to snuff out the failing city’s criminal resurgence,” Variety reported. Written by Caroline Dries (The Vampire Diaries, Smallville), the show will be bankrolled by Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Bros Television.
Kane was introduced in the DC Comics universe in the 1950s a wealthy heiress who, inspired by Batman, becomes a vigilante. The character was earlier planned as Batman’s love interest but was reintroduced as a lesbian of Jewish descent in 2006.
Rose’s credits include the Netflix series Orange is the New Black (2013) and the films Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) and xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017). She will next appear in Jon Turteltaub’s The Meg, which opens in the United States of America on Friday.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, The CW had made a conscious decision to cast an openly gay actress for the part. The network had last month cast transgender activist Nicole Maines as television’s first transgender superhero in Supergirl.