Over a year after she left Batwoman, Ruby Rose has revealed another reason for her departure from the CW series.
During her recent appearance on KIIS The Kyle and Jackie O Show, Rose said that her allergy to latex had contributed to her decision to leave the superhero show.
The Australian actress said she found out that she’s allergic to latex while filming the series, so she took a lot of allergy relief medication Benadryl while on set.
“Unfortunately, my [Batwoman] mask is latex. I was getting worse and worse because as you get more contact with it, I guess you get more reactions,” Rose shared for the first time. “I took off the [mask] at the end, and my face was just hives. My throat was all messed up. It was like it was out of a scary movie.”
Rose announced in May 2020 that she’s not reprising her role as Kate Kane, aka Batwoman, in season 2 of the Arrowverse series. “I have made the very difficult decision to not return to Batwoman next season,” Rose said in a statement at that time. “This was not a decision I made lightly as I have the utmost respect for the cast, crew and everyone involved with the show in both Vancouver and in Los Angeles.”
After keeping the details of her departure from the show for quite some time, Rose finally opened up about it in an interview with Entertainment Weekly last August. She revealed that the injury she incurred in 2019 while doing her own stunts on the show’s set was one of the reasons she left the DC series.
“Being the lead of a superhero show is tough. [Laughs] Being the lead in anything is tough,” said Rose, who didn’t find out the full extent of her injury until shooting for her action thriller film The Doorman started. “But I think, in that particular instance, it was a lot more difficult because I was still recovering from my surgery. I had my surgery and then 10 days later I went to work, which maybe wasn’t the best idea. Most people take about a month or three off before they return to work, so it was definitely made more difficult by that. But as far as being a lead of a show or a film — regardless if it’s action or if it’s emotional — in whichever ways it’s taxing.”
In an Instagram post last September, Rose shared that she needed to undergo emergency surgery following the on-set accident or she “was risking becoming paralyzed.” She added at that time that she had herniated two discs that were close to severing her spinal cord. “I was in chronic pain and couldn’t feel my arms,” recalled the actress.
Though Rose admitted to SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show last October that going back to work so quickly following the on-set accident was “tricky,” she made it clear that it wasn’t the primary reason why she chose not to return for the show’s sophomore run.
“They really accommodated trying to help me out the best they could, going back so early [after the accident], because we wanted to obviously meet the release date of the show,” Rose explained. “I think what played a bigger part [in my decision to quit the show] was more, we got shut down early. We didn’t get to finish the first season, which is such a shame, especially for a first season show. And then we went into lockdown with COVID and thinking of in quarantine and locked down, there was a lot of thought and reflection and kind of everyone did it. We all kind of thought about where we’re at and so Warner Bros. and [producer] Greg [Berlanti], and we were discussing the show and we had a conversation.”
Rose didn’t go into the details of the conversation she had with Warner Bros. and Berlanti, but she did note that they “sort of mutually agreed that probably what was best for the show at the time was that they go in a different direction and I go in a different direction.”
In Batwoman season 2, Javicia Leslie took over the show’s title role from Rose. But instead of replacing Rose as Kate, Leslie was introduced as Ryan Wilder, who eventually stepped into Batwoman’s iconic cape and cowl.
Batwoman season 3 is scheduled to premiere on October 13th at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.