Title: Prey Fills Girl Gap
Publisher: Sci Fi Wire
Publishing Release Date: July 17th, 2002
Byline: Unknown
Related Link: http://www.birdsofpreyonline.com/news.php?article=12

Laeta Kalogridis, creator of The WB's upcoming Birds of Prey superhero series, told reporters that her show will fill a gap in genre entertainment. "There's a lot of exploration being done on television and in movies of the way in which boys become men, men become superheroes," Kalogridis said at The WB's fall preview. "There's a lot of exploration of that. And ... outside of Buffy [the Vampire Slayer], [women haven't] really been explored, and it was an opportunity to do that within a franchise that was so firmly identified as ... having female superheroes that people recognized and knew about."

Birds of Prey is based on the DC Comics series and stars Dina Meyer as Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl, who is now disabled and, as the Oracle, oversees a trio of femme superheroes in New Gotham City. "Batgirl is kind of an icon, but she just had not had her own time to be explored," Kalogridis said. "And it gave us an opportunity to do that, which was really, frankly, too good to resist."

Ashley Scott plays Helena Kyle, aka the Huntress, who is the secret offspring of Batman and Catwoman, and Rachel Skarsten plays Dinah, a young clairvoyant who will eventually morph into the Black Canary. "I think the wonderful thing about the show is ... we have Dina [Meyer], who is a woman in her 30s, Ashley, who is in her 20s, and myself, I'm 17," Skarsten told SCI FI Wire. "So I think for girls and women, there's all sorts of different characters, age levels, generations that they can relate to. And then of course there's going to be the guys who watch it to see some booty."

Scott told SCI FI Wire that her role required a lot of physical training. "A lot of wire work," she said in an interview. "There's a lot of gymnastics and stuff. ... I did all my fight sequences in the pilot, but I wanted to go a little further and do back handsprings and really kind of get into it a little bit more physically. So we're training hard." Scott added that the wire harnesses are "so uncomfortable, man. It sucks. I had bruises here and here just doing a stinking photo shoot the other day. ... I was going forward, and they cut off my breathing. And I'm a tough chick. But ... at the end I was like, I started to cry. I was like, 'Guys, this is too much right now.'" Birds of Prey will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, starting in the fall.