BATWOMAN Casts Rachel Maddow as Vesper Fairchild

There's going to be a lot more gossip about Batwoman.

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the new CW series Batwoman has cast MSNBC TV program host and political commentator Rachel Maddow in the role of DC Comics character Vesper Fairchild.  The role will be recurring, with Maddow only appearing in a vocal performance.

According to the article, Vesper Fairchild is described as "a television and radio personality who had a romantic relationship with Bruce Wayne (Batman)."  In the Arrow episode "Elseworlds, Part 2", Oliver Queen revealed that he once dated Vesper.

Maddow, 46, is best known as the host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC and is the first openly lesbian anchor to host a major prime-time news program in the United States.  This will be her second connection to the world of Batwoman, after writing the introduction for the 2010 DC Comics deluxe edition of Batwoman: Elegy, which collected the "Elegy" storyline from writer Greg Rucka and artist J.H. Williams III that ran in Detective Comics (vol.1) #854-860.

"We consider Vesper Fairchild to be the sardonic Voice of Gotham," said Batwoman showrunner Caroline Dries in a statement.  "In addition to Rachel’s interest in Batwoman, we thought she’d be the perfect casting choice because her own hard-hitting journalism wildly contrasts Vesper’s penchant for snark, gossip and criticism of female superheroes."

Created in 1997 by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones, Vesper Fairchild first appeared in Batman (vol.1) #540 as a radio talk show host known as the "Siren of the Night", who met billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, secretly the vigilante known as Batman, when he was a guest on her show.  The two soon became romantically involved.

After a massive earthquake stuck Gotham City and it was declared a "No Man's Land" by the federal government, Fairchild left the city to start a career as a journalist.  When she returned to the revitalized city, she once again continued a romantic relationship with Wayne.  Because Fairchild was investigating Wayne's alter-ego Batman, he decided to sever the relationship to avoid his secrets from being revealed.  To this end, he invited her to Wayne Manor while he had three other women there, causing Fairchild to leave in tears.

She was eventually shot at Wayne's mansion by the assassin David Cain, who was acting on orders from Lex Luthor (then President of the United States), to destroy his business rival by framing Wayne for murder.  Her death would lead to Batman briefly abandoning his Bruce Wayne identity.

Batwoman premieres Sunday, October 6th on The CW.