Rachel Zegler Reflects on Snow White and West Side Story Backlash: 'I Refuse To Assimilate For Anybody's Comfort'

Snow White prima Rachel Zegler has dealt with an aggravated magnitude of backlash for portraying the titular quality successful Disney’s 2025 unrecorded enactment remake — and now, she’s opening up astir however the hatred affected her.

“I was told I wasn’t capable of 1 happening for West Side Story and excessively overmuch of different for Snow White,” Zegler precocious told Harper’s Bazaar astir the disapproval she received from conservative-leaning audiences for being excessively achromatic to play Maria successful Steven Spielberg's movie philharmonic remake and excessively non-white to play the Disney character.

“I grew up arrogant of being Colombian,” the Y2K histrion explained. “Eating the food, wearing the dresses, drinking the coffee, doing each the things that were truthful intrinsic to who I was arsenic a kid and who I americium arsenic an big — but I bash deliberation there’s an statement to beryllium made that, successful the nationalist oculus astatine least, erstwhile you’re 2 things, you’re simultaneously nothing. But I garbage to assimilate for anybody else’s comfort.”

She besides noted specifically that the backlash from Snow White was “really confusing” due to the fact that the backlash received implicit her West Side Story relation was specifically due to the fact that her begetter was achromatic and captious viewers specifically did not deliberation she was Latina capable to play the relation arsenic a result.

During the Snow White property tour, Zegler besides received dense disapproval for advocating for Palestine connected societal media, thing she present calls “a implicit survey successful intent versus impact.”

“You unrecorded and you learn, and there’s a caution that comes with that,” she reflected. “There’s an knowing that the temptation to talk doesn’t ever mean that it indispensable beryllium done, and that determination are a batch of opportunities to marque much meaningful alteration than a tweet.”

Despite the information that she hasn’t changed her caput astir the necessity of lasting up for what 1 believes is right, it’s wide the acquisition has had a profound effect connected her to this day. “If I’d been capable to foretell everything that would travel my way, the threats to my safety, I would person conscionable thrown my telephone into the ocean,” Zegler told the outlet of the effect to a “Free Palestine” tweet she made aft the debut of the Snow White trailer successful 2024. “I deliberation immoderate sane idiosyncratic would have.”

In the end, Snow White bombed astatine the container office, securing 1 of the lowest home totals for immoderate of Disney's remakes truthful far. Comscore figures for the Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2) directed Snow White revealed a $43 cardinal home container bureau debut, which was astatine the clip the 2nd biggest of 2025 down lone MCU flick Captain America: Brave New World and capable to apical that week's chart, but beneath adjacent the live-action Dumbo’s home motorboat haul of $45 cardinal backmost successful 2019, and beneath estimates.

For context, 2019’s The Lion King, 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, 2016’s The Jungle Book, and 2023’s The Little Mermaid each secured much than $100 domestically during their opening weekends. Snow White ended its theatrical tally with $205.6 cardinal worldwide.

Lex Briscuso is simply a movie and tv professional and a freelance amusement writer for IGN. You tin travel her connected Twitter astatine @nikonamerica.