Ruby Rose has revealed that the career-threatening Batwoman injury she suffered in 2019 did more than end her days as an action star: it wiped out four years of her life. The actor made the admission during the Season 5 premiere of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, the Fox series that drops 15 celebrities into a military-style boot camp in the Malaysian jungle.
Ruby Rose gets candid about her devastating Batwoman neck injury
Rose told viewers that stunt work once defined her. “I love playing an action superstar,” she said. “Kicking butt was one of the joys in my life — but it also ended up being the end.” While filming Batwoman for The CW, Rose herniated two discs and came close to severing her spinal cord, requiring emergency neck surgery. “I’ve always done all of my own stunts, so I could turn up as Ruby: the action star,” she said. “But I had an accident in 2019 on set of Batwoman and everything just sort of got bad from there.”
The damage limited her on the show itself. Rose chose to jump feet first out of a helicopter rather than fall backward like her castmates. Asked about the change by Candace Cameron Bure, she replied: “I broke my neck, like, twice already. I’ve got two replacement discs.” She confirmed the injury happened on set. Moreover, a confessional laid bare the cost. “There was no bouncing back. There was no part of me left. It was just the shell. Four years of my life — gone.”
After all, her neck gave her trouble again during a late-night obstacle course, when lifting a heavy bag overhead stalled the whole group. “The second I think that I’m failing tasks and it’s slowing down the others — or it’s impacting the group — that will start to play on the sort of confidence and the belief in myself,” she admitted. A staff member shouted, “I watched you as a superhero — come on!” Rose’s response was: “Eventually it’s like, I’m not really that action star, am I? I’m just Ruby.”
Rose has accused Batwoman executives of fostering an unsafe workplace. Warner Brothers has denied it.
(Source: Entertainment Weekly)