Gotham ended Season 4 with Selina Kyle in rough shape after she was shot by Jeremiah, and she was paralyzed from the waist down when the fifth and final season picked up. As it happens, however, the injury really affecting Selina in Season 5 had nothing to do with the bullet wound from Jeremiah. Actress Camren Bicondova suffered a broken foot that limited what she could do on set, and that could have negatively impacted the show as Selina made her transformation into early Catwoman.
Camren Bicondova spoke with CinemaBlend about Gotham Season 5, and she explained how the show worked around her foot injury:
Production was an angel. I'll say that. I had a boot, and they would have to [shoot around] sometimes so that the fight scenes, [like] with the gang leader at the beginning of Episode 3, I did actually some of that, but it was before I knew that my foot was broken. So there were some moves that I did where instead of kicking him with one foot, I kicked him with my right foot so that I could land softly on my foot. Stuff like that. A lot of technical changes. When directors would come in, they'd have to figure out different ways to shoot things that they wanted because they couldn't get my boot in. A lot of the time, it was just me in the frame, and then we'd pause and then we'd put my boot on and then we'd continue filming. But then my injury got a point where I was not allowed to take the boot off, so it was really difficult, and it wasn't until really the last two episodes that I was actually allowed to not have my boot on. It was a miracle. It was really, really difficult, and production was super helpful with everything. Everything.
Although Camren Bicondova was not stuck in a cast for her broken foot, she did have to wear a special boot if her foot was going to heal. As fans will remember, the third episode of Season 5 saw Selina get into some of her most intense action sequences of the series to date, first with her battle against the gang leader (who looked an awful lot like somebody Batman fans would recognize) and then later in her showdown against Ecco. Thanks to the Gotham production team, nobody was the wiser that Bicondova was injured during filming!
Obviously Camren Bicondova couldn't film Selina flipping from car to car as she casually talked to Bruce or any of the other moves that involved leaping like a cat, but thanks to camera angles and production, who could have guessed that Bicondova was actually injured? The show did get some mileage out of Bicondova without her boot until it became clear that the injury was serious enough that she needed to keep it on.
Still, boot or no boot, Selina was as vicious and cat-like in her fights as fans hoped for as she becomes closer and closer to Catwoman. Kudos to both Camren Bicondova and the production team! Gotham was able to showcase Camren Bicondova as Selina in shots that left out her boot, as viewers saw when she began slashing the gang leader's face to bloody ribbons. When I noted that Selina's slashing and clawing seemed very cat-like, Bicondova said this:
For sure. That was purposeful. It was in the script that I slashed him, but the other part of that point in the scene was just that to show how she literally had no filter and had no kind of conscience, and she didn't want to stop. And it takes Bruce to stop her, for her to stop. So that was really all the scenes that I've had to do this season were really crazy for me.
Who knows how far Selina would have gone in attacking the gang leader if Bruce hadn't used a grappling gun to grab her slashing hand? That made for a scene that seemed to really foreshadow their future dynamic as Batman and Catwoman. There was Selina, crossing lines Bruce was uncomfortable with, so Bruce pulled out a gadget to stop her without hurting her. If only he'd had it holstered on a utility belt!
The grappling gun didn't hurt Selina, although she did drop an amusing "What the hell?" when she realized what had happened. It's sometimes easy to forget how incredibly weird things are in Gotham City until a character calls attention to it. "What the hell?" is an appropriate reaction to a friend busting out a grappling gun! That said, Selina was injured later in the episode.
She was more than holding her own in the fight against Ecco and even had Ecco on her knees with a gun to her head... until Bruce turned up, trying to stop Selina from killing Ecco and succeeding in distracting her enough for Ecco to stab Selina in the leg and make a run for it.
After seeing how the seed from Ivy had managed to repair Selina's spine and get her on her feet again, I wondered if it could continue to heal Selina's injuries, including her new leg wound courtesy of Ecco. Here's what Camren Bicondova had to say about the seed potentially healing Selina's latest injury:
I don't think so. To be honest, that injury happened and then we continued filming and I think we all forgot about it. For that fight scene, I had a boot on, and I did none of that fight scene. So I told them, if she's going to stab me, it has to be my right leg because I'm gonna limp based on my actual injury. I think at that point, I mean it wasn't really a deep cut and Selina's just a badass in general. I think she's just like, 'Ah, whatever. My adrenaline's going. I want to kill Jeremiah. I don't have time to worry about that.'
Getting sliced in the leg is not enough to stop Selina on her mad quest for revenge on Jeremiah! In fact, she didn't even have time to dwell on the injury immediately after it happened. She had to worry about stopping Bruce from further attempts to stop her from going after the man who shot her, so she cuffed him to a door. Ah, true love, BatCat style.
Selina wasn't looking her most spry as she went to chase after Ecco, but it sounds like the injury won't be a huge deal for whatever happens next. At least it did give Camren Bicondova a good reason to limp in her scenes! It should be interesting to see how Gotham continues to hide Bicondova's injury as new episodes continue to air on Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. There's undoubtedly still plenty to look forward to in the remaining episodes of the final season, and Bicondova already teased there's more on the Bruce/Selina front to expect.
Showrunner John Stephens also shared with CinemaBlend about how it feels to bring Bane to Season 5 as well as why Gotham is using Ecco as its Harley Quinn, and all signs point toward Gotham as must-see TV for fans in the rest of the season.
