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Actress Rachel Zegler recently opened up to Harper’s Bazaar about the multiple waves of backlash she faced for playing Snow White in Disney’s live-action remake, which opened this time last year.
The entire project drew a lot of backlash from all corners of the internet for all sorts of reasons. In Zegler’s case, her early comments about the original film were deemed disparaging, some had an issue with any non-white actress in the role, and some had an issue with her social media postings.
Zegler had also faced a racial backlash four years earlier for playing Maria in 2021’s “West Side Story”. Speaking with the magazine, she admits she’s found being on the receiving end of all of it “really confusing”. She explains:
“I was told I wasn’t enough of one thing for ‘West Side Story’ and too much of another for ‘Snow White’. I grew up proud of being Colombian. Eating the food, wearing the dresses, drinking the coffee, doing all the things that were so intrinsic to who I was as a kid and who I am as an adult — but I do think there’s an argument to be made that, in the public eye at least, when you’re two things, you’re simultaneously nothing. But I refuse to assimilate for anybody else’s comfort.”
Some of that backlash, she admits, is from politics in her social media postings. She says she stands by her decision to use her platform to promote social change, but sees the controversy as “a complete study in intent versus impact”:
“You live, and you learn, and there’s a caution that comes with that. There’s an understanding that the temptation to speak doesn’t always mean that it must be done, and that there are a lot of opportunities to make more meaningful change than a tweet… If I’d been able to predict everything that would come my way, the threats to my safety, I would have just thrown my phone into the ocean. I think any sane person would have.”
The actress followed up “Snow White” with a celebrated turn in “Evita” on the UK stage. She’ll soon star alongside Ben Platt in a series of 25th anniversary concert performances of “The Last Five Years” taking place at the London Palladium, Hollywood Bowl, and Radio City Music Hall.
The post Rachel Zegler Reflects On “Snow White” Backlash appeared first on Dark Horizons.
