From playing a vinyl nerd to Catwoman, Zoë Kravitz’s roles are as versatile as her many looks, in Issue 2 of Vogue Scandinavia she talks about building a career as eclectic as her style
Zoë Kravitz possesses the effortless cool of someone who grew up around icons like Prince, Mick Jagger and Stevie Wonder.
She describes herself as a woman of style extremes – swaying from monochrome minimalism to a power-clash of Hawaiian shirts and polka dots, pulling off every ensemble with sly poise. “Sometimes I think a look needs to be so wrong that it’s right,” she says, with a laugh. “I think life is totally a game of dress-up.”
Photo: Stuart Winecoff
Still, when it comes to so-wrong-it’s-right fashion, Kravitz does draw the line. Earlier this year, she made a sartorial intervention with Channing Tatum – one of the stars of her directorial debut, Pussy Island – urging the actor to ditch his beloved Crocs.
In the upcoming thriller, Kravitz directs British actor Naomi Ackie as Frida – a young, whipsmart Los Angeles cocktail waitress with her eyes set on the philanthropist and tech mogul Slater King (Tatum). Having maneuvered into his inner circle, Frida is invited to an intimate gathering on his private island. Despite the free-flowing Champagne and late-night dance parties, there’s something terrifying about the island that she can’t quite put her finger on. The film, partly inspired by Kravitz’s own experiences dealing with wild behaviour from the opposite sex in the industry, is just the latest in Kravitz’s shift away from being purely an actor.
At the start of 2020, Kravitz took on her first producer credit for the celebrated, gender-bent 10-part Hulu adaptation of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. While the original 1995 novel and 2000 film centred on a male vinyl record obsessive, in the new version Kravitz takes on the lead role.
Kravitz tells me how personal the project was: “It had always been one of my favourite books. “I first read it in high school, and my mother [actor and activist Lisa Bonet] was in the film,” says Kravitz. “It is a classic to me; it was one of those movies I would watch over and over again. I love the way that Nick was able to capture this very niche group of people who talk about music and culture in a very specific way.”
'High Fidelity' was one of Kravitz's favourite books growing up. Photo: High Fidelity
I think a lot of women were excited to see a woman that knows about film and music and culture. I don't know how many times we've been portrayed that way
Zoë Kravitz
Hornby was closely involved in developing the series, reading drafts of scripts and giving notes on how best to portray his work. "We spent a lot of time just talking about music and sharing playlists back and forth, and so it was really great to have that dialogue with him,” Kravitz says. “He is one of my favourite humans, and just to have the blessing of ‘the godfather’ was great.”
Part of the appeal, according to Kravitz, is that onscreen women have all too rarely been portrayed as nerdily opinionated, or obsessed by popular culture. Instead, it is a predominantly male trait to have an arsenal of niche information to draw on in conversation. “I think a lot of women were excited to see a woman that knows about film and music and culture. I don’t know how many times we’ve been portrayed that way,” Kravitz says. “Knowing a lot about music or sports for some reason is associated with men more often, which is bizarre to me.”
In the remake – just as with the original male protagonist Rob – Kravitz’s character obsesses over past relationships. “Looking back, it feels like High Fidelity was almost written more for a woman.” In rediscovering the story of Rob as a female character, Kravitz explored an aspect of womanhood that most women can relate too. In being unapologetically interested – a nerd – her character in the series defied the demure and muted ideal and instead became unapologetically human. Opinionated and with the right to make selfish choices. “You know, sometimes we do the gender flip, and I don’t really see the point, but this specifically felt like a really interesting new angle to explore.”
Kravitz stars as Catwoman in the 2022 production of 'The Batman' . Photo: The Batman
The show also moved the events of the book from London to New York. “As a New Yorker, I was really excited to try and capture this world that I have been living in for so long. In a lot of ways, it was a love letter to the city.”
The city has always been a source of inspiration for Kravitz, who says her style and her makeup has always been connected and affected by her surroundings. “I’m incredibly inspired by my surroundings. Depending on what month it is, what the weather is like and what city I am in, it will completely change how I want to look and how I want to feel. To me, it is all connected,” she says. “The whole point of makeup to me is to enhance or affect the way that you feel, and so, obviously, we’re going to be affected by our environment.”
In January 2021, Kravitz released a capsule collection of lipsticks with YSL. Photo: YSL
Through her collaboration with YSL beauty in January of 2021, we glimpsed the geographic musings in Kravitz’s relationship to makeup. The capsule followed Kravitz’s personal history, from the city where she grew up, Los Angeles, in the deep plum Topanga Sunset, to the true red of her current residence – as seen in NYC Jungle. Venturing on, we discover the chilly shade Lost In Marais – inspired by Paris, where Kravitz was married – to the burnt Sienna of London sky, named after where she “shot her latest movie” – referring to the highly anticipated film The Batman, premiering in 2022. Although the plot of the upcoming superhero story is kept under lock and key, we know that the film will follow a younger version of Bruce Wayne, chronicling his second year as the Dark knight of Gotham City.
Yves Saint Laurent once said, “The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy” – and, if there is one thing Kravitz doesn’t lack, it is passion. Taking on the role of one of the most ferocious women in comic books, and with her directorial debut around the corner, Kravitz is busily shifting the way that women are portrayed onscreen. And sporting a red lip while doing it.