Rachel Zegler Reflects on Snow White and West Side Story Backlash: 'I Refuse To Assimilate For Anybody's Comfort'
· IGN
Snow White star Rachel Zegler has dealt with an intense amount of backlash for portraying the titular character in Disney’s 2025 live action remake — and now, she’s opening up about how the hate affected her.
“I was told I wasn’t enough of one thing for West Side Story and too much of another for Snow White,” Zegler recently told Harper’s Bazaar about the criticism she received from conservative-leaning audiences for being too white to play Maria in Steven Spielberg's movie musical remake and too non-white to play the Disney character.
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“I grew up proud of being Colombian,” the Y2K actress explained. “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.”
She also noted specifically that the backlash from Snow White was “really confusing” because the backlash received over her West Side Story role was specifically because her father was white and critical viewers specifically did not think she was Latina enough to play the role as a result.
During the Snow White press tour, Zegler also received heavy criticism for advocating for Palestine on social media, something she now calls “a complete study in intent versus impact.”
“You live and you learn, and there’s a caution that comes with that,” she reflected. “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.”
Despite the fact that she hasn’t changed her mind about the necessity of standing up for what one believes is right, it’s clear the experience has had a profound effect on her to this day. “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,” Zegler told the outlet of the response to a “Free Palestine” tweet she made after the debut of the Snow White trailer in 2024. “I think any sane person would have.”
In the end, Snow White bombed at the box office, securing one of the lowest domestic totals for any of Disney's remakes so far. Comscore figures for the Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2) directed Snow White revealed a $43 million domestic box office debut, which was at the time the second biggest of 2025 behind only MCU flick Captain America: Brave New World and enough to top that week's chart, but below even the live-action Dumbo’s domestic launch haul of $45 million back in 2019, and below 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 all secured more than $100 domestically during their opening weekends. Snow White ended its theatrical run with $205.6 million worldwide.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.