Zoe Kravitz has entered a new era of self-confidence, one that will see her releasing her first solo album produced by Jack Antonoff. In an interview with Elle published Monday (Feb. 14), the Batman actress discussed her previously announced solo project, sharing that she and the Bleachers frontman are in the midst of writing and recording music at Electric Lady Studios.
Kravitz, who spoke at length about how her 30s have enabled her to embrace who she is in spite of online hate and speculation, didn’t go into detail about when the project would be released. She did, however, tell Elle that it will examine themes of love and loss. “It feels vulnerable, and it’s a little scary, but making music makes me happy,” she said.
The star had shared in a September 2021 interview with AnOther magazine that she had been working on the solo album with Antonoff on and off for a few years. “I wrote it over a long stretch of time, subconsciously just capturing this range of emotions, which has been interesting to look back on and see what I was writing about them, then and now and in between,” she shared at the time. “It’s personal. It’s about love and loss. I got married. I got divorced. Separations, break-ups are sad but are beautiful things too. It’s about the bittersweetness, that beginning and that end. It’s so complex, that space, when you’re in between heartbroken and mourning the loss of something and excited for what’s ahead of you.”
The solo record will be new territory for the 33-year-old actress, whose previous musical endeavors have been, for the most part, confined to her work with her band Lolawolf with Jimmy Giannopoulos. The R&B/electro pop duo has two studio albums – 2014’s Calm Down and 2020’s Tenderness. Kravitz also has a song on the soundtrack for Big Little Lies, the hit HBO show on which she starred opposite Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep and Shailene Woodley. Antonoff, on the other hand, is both a veteran producer and longtime frequenter of Electric Lady, having worked with Taylor Swift, Lorde, St. Vincent and Lana Del Rey at the famed New York City recording studios.
An actress and musician, Kravitz is professionally a clear combination of her parents – actress Lisa Bonet and rockstar Lenny Kravitz – whom she also spoke about with Elle. Acknowledging how privileged she was to have been raised by superstars of the entertainment industry, she said that she used to feel “a little bit of embarrassment around what came with my last name.”
“People would always assume that if I got a job, it was because of that,” she said. “I’m not going to pretend like it didn’t help me get into the room. But I had to remember that I work hard, and as a child I was putting on performances in my grandparents’ house. And it had nothing to do with who my family was. It was because I loved it.”
‘They’re awesome,” she continued about her parents. “I’m grateful to be their child. And I also am my own human being.”
Kravitz, whose film The Batman with Robert Pattinson is set to premiere in March, said her parents are good confidants – along with musician pals Donald Glover and Alicia Keys. Keys made a cameo in Elle’s profile on Kravitz to praise her friend’s “effortless” and “beautiful” trajectory: “Something we talk about is understanding the pure value of who we are as women,” Keys said. “We remind each other that we are special, powerful, and important. Whatever she does is natural, honest, pure. She’s the definition of a true artist.”
