As confirmed by the Hollywood Reporter on Monday, January 24, Ivory Aquino, a Fil-Am transgender will be Alysia Yeoh, the best friend of Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, the masked hero played by Leslie Grace.
The buzz of Aquino’s casting got speculated online after the Batgirl lead star Grace shared a photograph of the two of them via an Instagram story earlier this month.
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The Deadline confirmed it first officially about the news on Aquino coming on board the cast.
The Batgirl will debut on HBO Max and have Brendan Fraser in a villain role and Michael Keaton back as Batman (the hero he first played more than 30 years ago in Tim Burton’s Batman). Also in the cast is J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Jim Gordon, Barbara Gordon’s dad.
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Bad Boys for Life filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah serve as directors from a script by DC mainstay Christina Hodson, who penned The Flash and Birds of Prey.
No release date for Batgirl yet. Currently, it is in production in the UK.
Back on Aquino, she is known for her work in the 2017 LGBTQIA+ rights miniseries When We Rise, which aired on ABC and saw her portray trans rights activist Cecilia Chung.
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Historically, both Aquino and Yeoh are transgenders, which makes this the first live-action feature film version of a DC Comics story to include a trans character. Yeoh first appeared in a 2011 issue of Batgirl written by Gail Simone and penciled by Ardian Syaf.
