Zoe Kravitz is currently promoting her Hulu series, High Fidelity, based on the Nick Hornby book of the same name and the film adaptation which starred her mother in a supporting role. Zoe executive produced the show but she was not behind the initial thought to gender-bend the lead character – Zoe is playing the lead, which John Cusack played in the movie. When the show was first coming together, they approached Zoe to be the lead and that’s how it happened. Zoe spoke about all of this and more with the New York Times – you can read the piece here. She gets into the criticism of Big Little Lies as well, and both of her parents are interviewed, which is amazing! Imagine working for the New York Times and calling up Lenny Kravitz to get some quotes about his daughter. That’s great. Some highlights:

Zoe didn’t think she would be where she is now: “I really thought I was going to do theater and indie films. That was what I liked growing up. And also, that was what I thought I was suited for. I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me in big movies.”

She was discouraged from auditioning for one Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies: Not by Nolan personally, she said. It wasn’t a Catwoman-size part. “It wasn’t like we were talking to the top of the top in terms of who was casting the thing. But they said they weren’t ‘going urban.’ I thought that was really funny.”

She didn’t mind that Bonnie was the only woman of color in Big Little Lies: It didn’t bother her, she said, that the [the first season of the] show never acknowledged that Bonnie was the only prominent person of color in the series’ otherwise monochromatic Northern California milieu. “In the first season, there was something really refreshing about not making that a story line. It’s frustrating when people of color can only play a character that’s written as a minority. So it’s refreshing when it’s not about that. But it’s complicated, because you don’t want to ignore that fact. Part of our responsibility as storytellers is to tell the truth.” She said she’d brought up ideas for Bonnie, ways to explore her position in the world of the show that felt truthful. “I pitched things, and it didn’t resonate with everybody and that’s OK,” she said, “It’s not like I didn’t have anything to do. Bonnie has a lot going on besides the fact that she’s a minority, you know? But that detail and that depth would have been delightful.”

Lenny Kravitz on how Zoe came to live with him when she was 11: “She wanted to live with me and I wanted to have her. It was time. And as a family, we made the decision together. It really helped me to focus my life. I was running around the world touring, man … I had to make some lifestyle changes.”

She always loved the High Fidelity movie: “For some reason. ‘High Fidelity’ was one of the few pieces of art that my parents had been a part of that I was really able to separate from them. It’s a weird thing, because it can be really uncomfortable and strange watching your mom kiss John Cusack or whatever, but it became a film that I loved and watched and could quote.”

The Hulu series is more “woke” but Zoe just wanted it to look authentic: “I was trying to recreate a world that I know and that’s what it looks like. It doesn’t look like a bunch of white girls, like the show ‘Girls.’ If that show was in Iowa or something, fine, but you’re living in Brooklyn. There’s people of color everywhere. It’s unavoidable. Same thing with Woody Allen — like, how do you not have black people in your movies? It’s impossible. They’re everywhere. We’re everywhere. I’m sorry, but we’re everywhere.”

The gender-flip: “I think a lot of white men who identified with the book think it’s theirs, and are ready for us to screw it up, and are going to have trouble seeing it in a different light. But I think if they get past that thing, they’ll see that we actually really did honor the property, I think.”

[From The NY Times]

Absolutely adore the shade for Girls and Woody Allen! What’s often lost in conversations about why Woody Allen is awful is the fact that he’s always had such a singularly WHITE vision of New York. He sucks for so many reasons, but people don’t talk about that one enough. I also enjoyed the tea about Big Little Lies and how Zoe pitched some ideas for Bonnie and they were rejected. I watched all of that awful second season and the lack of thought that went into Bonnie’s development was really notable, and you could tell that the screenwriters just didn’t know what else to do with her. Zoe did the best she could. Anyway, I’m sort of interested in this High Fidelity show.

Photos courtesy of WENN.