Ruby Rose Quit Her Role as Batwoman After She was Harassed for Not Being Lesbian Enough
Two years ago, the CW announced that Ruby Rose of "Orange is the New Black" was going to star in "Batwoman," the first superhero vehicle yet to have an openly LGBTQ lead. The way I looked at it, this wasn't just the network bowing to identity politics or virtue signalling or anything of the sort because the character of Kate Kane, a Jewish, lesbian goes back in the comic books - and the canon - to 2006. And kicks all sorts of Gotham ass.
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I never wrote about it again because the show flunked the Jerry Thornton One Episode Test so I never watched it again. And the fan reviews remained horrible. The YouTubers were really negative. It was badly put together and apparently routinely featured 100 pound women punching the lights out of henchmen twice their size and just never sounded like it was worth the time.
Well after one season, Rose is out.
Source -EW has confirmed that the Australian actress is leaving Batwoman, which concluded its first season this past Sunday. In light of this decision, the CW superhero drama will recast the role ahead of its second season, which will hopefully premiere in 2021.
"I have made the very difficult decision to not return to Batwoman next season," Rose said in a statement obtained by EW. "This was not a decision I made lightly."
OK. Fine. It happens all the time in Hollywood. Actors quit. Showrunners get forced out. Creative changes were made. But in this case, it goes back further. Last year around this time, Rose quit Twitter after being harangued for her inadequate amount of Jewishness and lesbianness.
Source - Actress Ruby Rose has deactivated her Twitter account after she was subject to a massive backlash for getting cast as the lead role in the CW’s upcoming TV series “Batwoman.” Critics are upset that unlike the title character, Rose is not Jewish and doesn’t identify as a lesbian.
Shocked by the ice cold treatment on social media, Rose reminded fans that she had come out as gay at age 12. As she got older, Rose says she began to think of herself as a man in a woman’s body, and therefore no longer considered herself to be a gay woman, but a gender fluid person who is mainly attracted to women. This fact seems to distance Rose enough from a lesbian-identifying character that many fans of the comic book Batwoman judged her not gay enough.
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Listen, this is one lifelong hetero, married, Catholic, suburban, gender-solid male who knows enough to give the issue of whether an actress is insufficiently lesbian and Jewish enough to pretend to run around Gotham punching out fictional supervillians in a sexy bat suit a good leaving alone. This is somebody else's fight, not mine.
But I'll say what I said when her qualifications were being questioned at the outset. How did we get to the point where an actor can't play a role unless he/she/zer checks all the demographic boxes? Christoph Waltz won the Oscar for "Inglorious Basterds." Are we supposed to say he doesn't deserve it because he only sounds and acts convincingly like a Nazi, but he's not? What about Daniel Day Lewis? He played Lincoln without actually being from Illinois, President of the United States or a gunshot-wound-to-the-head victim. Gal Gadot is, in fact, a goddess. But she's not an immortal Amazonian princess with superpowers (with my apologies to Gal Gadot if she is in fact an immortal Amazonian princess with super powers, which wouldn't surprise me).
The whole point of acting was, well, that's it's acting. It's playing pretend. And the further you are from what you're actually playing makes it all that more impressive when you do it convincingly. Charlize Theron won an Oscar because she's a legitimate 9.5 on her worst day, and transformed herself into a Daytona Beach 3. And a serial killer. Margot Robbie played Tonya Harding, who couldn't be further away from her on the human race spectrum. That's what acting is supposed to be. And used to, before people started demanding you fit their definition of what the character should be. Hating the acting is legitimate. This is just witchhuntery.
I'm sorry to Ruby Rose. And I hope she remains exactly as lesbian and keeps exactly the right amount of fluidity in her gender and remains every bit as Jewish or non-Jewish as she wants.
The world is unaware of itself. Ignore the noise, everybody.