Scarlett Johansson says The Batman: Part II role gave her ‘existential angst’

Scarlett Johansson has admitted she struggled to unlock her role as Gilda Dent in The Batman: Part II, revealing the challenging part left her with “a lot of existential angst”.

Scarlett Johansson has admitted her role in The Batman: Part II was “hard to crack” and left her with “existential angst”.

The 41-year-old star – who has played Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in eight films across the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – has admitted her entry into the world of DC was not plainsailing.

She told Entertainment Tonight in her first comments about the job: “It gave me a lot of existential angst, for some reason,

“It was very hard to figure out. I don’t know why, whether it was just the role or it was just where I am in my life, but it was just hard to crack it. That’s all I can say about it. It was a tough role in a lot of ways.”

Scarlett is to play Gilda Dent, alongside Sebastian Stan, 44, as Harvey Dent.

Matt Reeves is writing and directing the follow up to his 2022 movie The Batman, which introduced Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader.

The Twilight Saga star will be back for the sequel, but he has played down the idea of his Batman entering the wider DC Universe on the big screen.

He told LADBible: “I think it would be kind of tough to have this version of Bruce outside of Matt’s world.

“It’s one of the only characters I guess because of the length of the shoots but also it’s such a specific kind of [style], the tone of it gets inside you.”

Pattinson felt “strange” for some time after filming The Batman because he was constantly “in the dark”.

He said: “I remember that happened to me the last time I did it, it took a while. You’re just in the dark, the whole time.

“Both mood-wise and light-wise, I can’t see anything for like months. It does affect you like you feel strange afterwards.”

The Odyssey actor recently teased the upcoming sequel is a “real left turn” from the previous movie.

The 40-year-old star told Collider: “It’s so ambitious. I mean, I sort of said the other day on something that the first one was a different take on a Batman movie, and this one is another.

“It’s a real left turn from the first one, but somehow it keeps elements of the kind of feel of it.

“But it just feels really ambitious, and I’m excited to see how it turns out.”

In July, it was revealed that Warner Bros. has pushed the sequel’s release to February 18, 2028, having previously scheduled it for October 2026 before moving it to October 2027.

Matt announced the latest release date alongside the first camera test footage of Robert reprising his role as Batman.

The sequel reunites the filmmaker with co-writer Mattson Tomlin, and the cast also includes Charles Dance, Brian Tyree Henry and Sebastian Koch.

Recently, production was brought to a halt after a cast member was allegedly struck by the Batmobile, while Ocean’s Eleven director Steven Soderbergh stepped in for Matt last month when the filmmaker was forced to pause work on the movie due to a “personal matter”.