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Halle Berry has once again defended her infamous flop Catwoman – this time with a cheeky joke.
Berry, 58, starred as the titular superhero in the notorious 2004 film, which earned her a Razzie for worst performance of the year.
On the 20th anniversary of its release, Berry has gone to bat for the film once again during an appearance on The Tonight Show.
“I loved it,” the actor said to host Jimmy Fallon. “It got panned. The critics said it sucked balls.”
Fallon responded, “Balls aren’t that bad,” to which Berry jokingly agreed: “Balls aren’t that bad.”
“What I’m happy about is that the children have found it now on the internet, and they love it,” she continued. “So, it’s so vindicating. Because now they’re saying it’s cool and what the heck was everybody’s problem with it?”
Fans of the film will be delighted to hear that the Oscar-winner would be keen to reprise the role on one condition: if she was also to direct.
Berry made her feature directorial debut in 2020 with the sports thriller Bruised, in which she starred as a disgraced MMA fighter.
It is not the first time she has expressed an interest in directing the comic book film. In 2021, she told Jake’s Takes that she would “love” the chance to “reimagine” the story.
“If I can get a hold of that now, knowing what I know, having had this experience [on Bruised], and reimagine that world the way I reimagined this story,” she said.
“Bruised was written for a white Irish Catholic 25-year-old girl, and I got to reimagine it. I wish I could go back and reimagine Catwoman and redo that. Have a redo on that, now knowing what I know.”
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Berry went on to explain her vision for the leather-clad superhero, stating: “I would have Catwoman saving the world like most male superheroes do, and not just saving women from their faces cracking off.”
The plot of the 2004 film saw Catwoman take on a corrupt beauty cosmetics company. “I would make the stakes a lot higher, and I think make it more inclusive of both men and women,” the actor said.
Speaking about the backlash to the film, the actor said that as a Black woman she is “used to carrying negativity on my back, fighting, being a fish swimming upstream by myself”.
“I’m used to defying stereotypes and making a way out of no way…It didn’t derail me because I’ve fought as a Black woman my whole life,” she said.
“A little bad publicity about a movie? I didn’t love it, but it wasn’t going to stop my world or derail me from doing what I love to do.”
Berry is currently starring opposite Mark Wahlberg in the recently released Netflix action-comedy The Union.
