As Taylor Swift best put it, “They’re burning all the witches, even if you aren’t one,” and actress Rachel Zegler has been burned at the stake.
In the past few weeks, the star of the new live-action version of “Snow White” has been subject to the older white male witch-hunting mob, as so many young women in the public eye have been for years.
Zegler’s controversy began when she was cast as the princess back in June 2021 because people felt that she didn’t fit the image of the original cartoon character. Their feelings, of course, came as no surprise. We all saw the unjustified backlash when Halle Bailey was cast as the fictional princess Ariel in “The Little Mermaid.”
In September 2022, audiences found more ways to have issues with the actress.
During an interview with Variety, Zegler shared her views on her casting and approach to the role.
“I just mean that it’s no longer 1937. We absolutely wrote a ‘Snow White’ that … she’s not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love; she’s going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true,” Zegler said.
Okay? What’s the issue with that? Shouldn’t princesses teach young girls how to be strong and gentle leaders? But sure, teaching women to be brave and follow their own hearts is a terrible, horrible thing.
People also hated that she stated the original film was “weird” because the prince stalks Snow White, and the creators didn’t want to do that this time, so they made the film less of a love story and more about Snow White herself.
When you really think about it, the original “Snow White” was creepy and horrifying. Personally, I never went to bed dreaming about some guy kissing me while I was in a coma. Zegler also makes another point about finding the original film frightening as a child, which many can agree with.
These interviews were just the start of the mob hunt against the young actress. During the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, Zegler stated that if she was going to stand for 18 hours in an iconic Disney princess dress, she deserved “to be paid for every hour that it is streamed online.”
Wow, crazy concept that a person asks to be paid for every hour of work that they do. Apparently, it is one. People blew this video up and said she was a selfish woman and resentful to the industry.
They’re joking, right? Imagine if you had to stand in a tight corset for hours on end and have to run scenes over and over again, and then you get told you’re barely getting paid or not getting paid enough.
Also, acting is a job. This is a profession where everyone, including women, deserves to be paid what they are owed. It’s just like saying you want to get paid for every hour spent in the office. Which is fair to say, especially for Zegler, who had to put in overtime to carry the entire film on her back. Because we all know Gal Gadot was not cutting it.
Which brings us to the next part of Zegler’s controversy, that all of the interviews she gave and her acting were the reasons the movie bombed.
Wrong. Are we forgetting that at just 17 years old, Steven Spielberg himself cast Zegler out of 30,000 applicants as Maria in “West Side Story,” which earned her her first of many Golden Globes? Or that she was Lucy Gray Baird in “A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” another iconic film in the Hunger Games series.
But yeah, her talent was the reason that the movie failed, not the fact that Gadot acts like a monotone marionette doll. Gadot’s line delivery is not just poor but cringy, and her singing is comparable to a cat forced to be bathed.
However, it’s still all Zegler, the narcissist’s fault. That’s another thing the witch hunters are calling Zegler: a narcissist, as if she didn’t shout out everyone she worked closely with on the crew with their own paragraph on her Instagram.
Zegler also took the time to help Disney promote “Snow White” to crowds of excited young girls in Snow White dresses at every premiere and event. Seeing as at the end of the day, the film is a children’s movie, and the children are loving it. It is a bright new way to see the princess for young girls.
The number of moms posting their daughters dancing in the theatres or at home to the music has been overwhelming. They are the target audience, and they are who matters in the situation, not some spoiled grown-up who doesn’t like that Disney is getting a makeover. Sure, it might not be the best one with all the live-action films — I’ll give people that, but it is not just a 23-year-old woman’s fault.
To the people who are claiming that this will end Zegler’s career, try again. She’s about to play Eva Perón in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita” on London’s West End. This is coming after she just made her Broadway debut back in the fall as none other than Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet.”
Society can try and tear down Zegler and say she doesn’t deserve her success. However, it won’t work. The woman has more talent in her pinky finger than any of her hunters have in their whole body.
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