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Ruby Rose built a large part of her screen career around what her body could do. On the Season 5 premiere of Special Forces: World\u2019s Toughest Test<\/em>, the actor was confronted almost immediately with how much a serious injury from Batwoman<\/em> had changed what she could still ask of it.<\/p>\n The first challenge required the celebrity recruits to fall backward from a hovering helicopter into open water. Rose took a different route, entering feet first because of her neck history. When Candace Cameron Bure asked why, Rose said she had broken her neck \u201clike, twice already\u201d and had two replacement discs, according to EW<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rose connected those limitations to the 2019 stunt injury she suffered while working on Batwoman<\/em>. At the time, she revealed that two herniated discs had come close to damaging her spinal cord and required emergency neck surgery. The L.A. Times<\/a> reported on the surgery when Rose publicly shared footage of the procedure.<\/p>\n Seven years later, she is still measuring herself against the action performer she remembers being before that injury. \u201cThere was no bouncing back,\u201d Rose said in a confessional on the Fox series. \u201cThere was no part of me left. It was just the shell. Four years of my life gone.\u201d<\/p>\n Season 5 takes place in the Malaysian jungle, where 15 celebrity recruits face military-style exercises modeled on Special Forces selection. Fox<\/a> says the season includes challenges involving underground bunkers, suspended supply retrievals, chemical exposure and other exercises designed to test recruits physically and mentally.<\/p>\n Before the premiere, she told Us Weekly<\/a> that there were moments she considered quitting because she worried an injury on the course could undo some of the progress she had made.<\/p>\n Later in the premiere, Rose struggled to lift a heavy bag over her head after a nighttime obstacle course. Because the entire group had to keep holding their bags until she finished, the difficulty quickly became psychological as well as physical.<\/p>\n She admitted that slowing down the other recruits could undermine her confidence. One of the Directing Staff members pushed her by reminding her that he had watched her play a superhero. Rose\u2019s answer to the camera was much quieter. \u201cEventually it\u2019s like, I\u2019m not really that action star, am I?\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m just Ruby.\u201d<\/p>\n The medical emergency itself was public long before Special Forces<\/em>. In September 2019, Rose posted footage from her neck surgery and said she had herniated two discs while performing stunts.<\/p>\n She wrote that doctors had warned she risked paralysis without an operation and that she was living with chronic pain while also losing feeling in her arms. The TheWrap<\/a> and the L.A. Times both reported those comments at the time.<\/p>\n Rose later explained on The Tonight Show<\/em> that she initially believed she had injured a rib after performing one stunt for hours and kept working through the pain. An MRI later revealed how serious the neck injury was. TheWrap<\/a> reported that Rose described the experience as \u201creally, really terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n Rose left Batwoman<\/em> after its first season in 2020. The following year, she publicly accused the production and Warner Bros. Television of unsafe working conditions and said she had been pressured to return shortly after surgery.<\/p>\n Warner Bros. Television strongly disputed her account. In a statement reported by the L.A. Times<\/a>, the studio called Rose\u2019s version \u201crevisionist history\u201d and said it had decided not to exercise her Season 2 option after multiple complaints about workplace behavior that had been reviewed internally.<\/p>\nThe Old Injury Changed Her First \u2018Special Forces\u2019 Task<\/h2>\n
Rose Says the Injury Took More Than Her Physical Strength<\/h2>\n
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Her \u2018Batwoman\u2019 Exit Still Has a Disputed History<\/h2>\n