I’ve been a fan of Rachel Zegler since I first stumbled across her cover of ‘Dead Girl Walking’ from Heathers: The Musical five years ago. I’ve always been obsessed with musical theatre and at the time Heathers was one of my favourite soundtracks (I recommend listening to the West End version – Carrie Hope Fletcher and Jamie Muscato do an amazing job), so seeing someone on YouTube cover this technically challenging song so beautifully was inspiring. I’ve watched Rachel Zegler grow as a performer since then and have seen her rise to fame from posting covers on YouTube, to getting a role in Shrek: The Musical, to releasing her own songs (which are so lyrically captivating and beautiful), to being cast as Maria in West Side Story, to the controversy surrounding her today.
But where did it all begin? Why is the new Snow White being villainised in the media and cast as an Evil Queen in disguise?
Well, it’s complicated.
It seems the catalyst for this surge of online hate was the Variety interview with Zegler and Gal Gadot. However, like most things on the internet, it has been taken hugely out of context and only a short clip from this interview has been used in this incredibly hateful conversation about Zegler as an actress. For those of you who haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend you do.*
Zegler and Gadot are both visibly very grateful and overwhelmed by their roles in the film; the interview is a discussion about how much their roles mean to them. When asked about how the film is going to ‘bring a modern edge’ to this fairy-tale, Zegler replies with: ‘“it’s no longer 1937 and we absolutely wrote a Snow White that is not going to be saved by the Prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and the leader that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true. And so it’s just a really incredible story for, I think, young people everywhere to see themselves in”’.
As we all know, Disney has been remaking the original Disney Princess movies that we all know and love, putting a new spin on them where the Princess gets her happy ending but without being completely reliant on the Prince coming to save her. We saw it in Cinderella with Lily James, in Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson, and most recently in The Little Mermaid with Halle Bailey. I won’t spoil anything, but the changes made in all three examples gave the princesses more independence, more power, and more control over their endings. Surely, it can only be expected they would do the same with the Snow White remake, but then the question remains as to why there is so much hate directed at Zegler at the moment over this role.
We’re living in an age where people can mindlessly scroll through social media and a world where it has become incredibly easy to only watch small clips from longer interviews, and to start, in the words of Taylor Swift, ‘burning all the witches’ while hiding behind a phone screen.
In a time where this hate can be circulated and facilitated so easily, there’s a very simple solution: to treat people with kindness.
*Link to Variety interview with Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RVg3yetTE4
Edited by: Saisha Gulamhussein