We learned over the last couple of months that the Ruby Rose was departing the role of Kate Kane for Batwoman and that the producers were going to go with a new actress and a new character rather than attempt to recast it. It’s taken a bit but they’ve now revealed that Javicia Leslie will take on the role that was previously described below. Leslie had just wrapped up her two-season run on God Friended Me which was part of Berlanti Productions, so it was an easy shift within the production company.
“I am extremely proud to be the first Black actress to play the iconic role of Batwoman on television, and as a bisexual woman, I am honored to join this groundbreaking show which has been such a trailblazer for the LGBTQ+ community,” Leslie said.
In a casting notice, a copy of which was obtained by Deadline, the new lead character is named Ryan Wilder and is younger than Kate Kane — she is in her mid-to late 20s. This may be a new character or a code for another character that they’ll reveal later, but Season 2 of The CW show will chronicle how she becomes Batwoman.
Further details about the role indicates that she’s “A former drug-runner, the now-reformed and sober Ryan lives in her van with her plant and is a highly skilled but wildly undisciplined fighter. Like her predecessor, Ryan is an out lesbian, with performers who identify as LGBTQ encouraged to submit for the role.”
“I’m inventing a whole new character who in her past was inspired by Batwoman, so she will take on the mantle and is completely maybe not the right person at the time to be doing it, so that’s what makes it fun,” Caroline Dries recently said of the decision to introduce a new Batwoman character, adding that rebooting Batwoman as a different character allows the show to “respect everything that Ruby put into the Kate Kane character” and “helps the audience a little bit too, that we are not asking them to not address the elephant in the room.”
The series airs on The CW with streaming the day after through their site and app.
The main cast includes Ruby Rose as Kate Kane / Batwoman, Meagan Tandy as Sophie Moore, Camrus Johnson as Luke Fox, Nicole Kang as Mary Hamilton, Rachel Skarsten as Alice, Dougray Scott as Jacob Kane, and Elizabeth Anweis as Catherine Hamilton-Kane.
Plot Concept: Three years after billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne and his vigilante alter-ego Batman disappeared, his cousin Kate Kane sets out to overcome her demons and become a symbol of hope by protecting the streets of Gotham City as Batwoman.
