Ruby Rose says her Batwoman injury took four years of her life, and her action career with it
On Fox’s Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, Ruby Rose went feet first out of the helicopter — and explained what the 2019 Batwoman accident took from her.
Here’s one for the ‘painful career turns’ column: Ruby Rose is back in the spotlight, and not for her usual reasons. The former Batwoman star is now breaking her silence about just how brutal that infamous on-set injury turned out to be. Turns out it didn’t just kill her time in Gotham — it cost her four full years of her life.
Four years of my life — gone.
The injury that changed everything
If you missed the saga first time round: while making Batwoman for The CW in 2019, Rose managed to herniate two discs and came alarming close to slicing her spinal cord. It all ended in sudden emergency neck surgery, which isn’t something anyone needs in their calendar. As she put it herself on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, the Fox show that dumps a bunch of (mostly knackered) celebs into Malaysian jungle boot camp, action was her thing. Now it’s her Achilles heel.
She gave up the usual actor’s reluctance to talk about injuries in front of the cameras. Stunt work, she said, had defined her life until it very nearly ended it. Strictly no exaggeration, either: she’s been left with two discs replaced and lingering damage that’s still catching up with her years later.
There was no bouncing back. There was no part of me left. It was just the shell.
All of that has left her physically limited — noticeably even in the new show. Where her fellow contestants were falling backwards out of helicopters, Rose chose to go feet first, telling Candace Cameron Bure she had already broken her neck twice and wasn’t in a hurry to go for the hat trick. And you could see it on the obstacles too: something as simple as lifting a kit bag overhead was now a potential threat to the whole group, slowing them down and clearly weighing on her confidence. When staff tried to gee her up by reminding her she was a superhero, Rose quipped that she’s not really the action star any more — just Ruby. Fairly devastating stuff, all told.
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Still some bad blood
Behind the scenes, it’s not all emotional wounds. Rose previously claimed that the set of Batwoman was an unsafe place to work, pointing plenty of fingers at the powers that be. Warner Brothers responded about as you’d expect, denying it whole. The row hasn’t been quietly resolved, either, but the physical penalty seems to have overshadowed even the professional drama for Rose herself.
Batwoman began in 2019 and already cost Ruby Rose four years of her career.