Since Orange Is The New Black brought her a breakout role as Stella, Litchfield Prison's most in-demand inmate, Ruby Rose has braved the ‘Taymerica’ inflatable slide at Taylor Swift’s infamous Fourth of July party to become Hollywood’s go-to for big-budget action thrillers: over the next few months, she’ll be kicking the proverbial in xXx: Return of Xander Cage, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and John Wick 2. Not one to be pigeonholed, she’s also landed an as-yet-undisclosed role in the next Pitch Perfect film (which may or may not involve jazz hands), and remains a passionate advocate of LGBTQ rights.
For xXx: Return of Xander Cage, the latest instalment in Vin Diesel’s off-the-wall action franchise, Ruby is once again flipping gender expectation on its head. As Ruby tells Grazia, her character Adele is the titular Xander’s ‘right-hand man, his road dog’ – a position more typically reserved for, well, men.
‘Vin likes to describe the relationship as a gender irrelevant bromance,’ she explains. ‘People will leave yearning for and being quite jealous of that relationship or friendship if they don’t have one, because it’s not romantic, it’s unconditional.’
While the depressingly inevitable backlash surrounding the all-female Ghostbusters showed – sigh - that Hollywood’s gender-flip treatment can prove contentious, Ruby stands firm on the one female reboot she wants to see.
‘I’ll cop so much flack for saying this, but I would love to see a female James Bond,’ she tells us – with one major caveat. ‘I’m not saying I want to do it! No way am I going to let myself get that much negative online attention.’
‘I would have liked it if Angelina Jolie did it, when she was still wanting more to act […] She would have been awesome,’ she adds, after explaining that she remains positive about the future for female-led blockbusters.
‘We’ve come a really long way and [these films] are popping up far more frequently. That’s a great thing because people were ignoring that there’s an entire female audience that wants to go and see someone that inspires them on the screen – not even just women, but also men and boys are inspired by that. It’s not so black and white and cut down the middle,’ she says. ‘I think it’s wonderful and I can only see it becoming more frequent.’
Watch our full interviews with Ruby Rose and Nina Dobrev below
xXx: Return Of Xander Cage is out in cinemas now
READ MORE: 34 Things You Didn't Know About Orange Is The New Black