Inside Disney’s Snow White Controversy: Zegler at the Center
by Katie Ward
Disney’s live action Snow White has been a box office bomb, dropping from the number one spot by its second weekend [1] – a catastrophe for a huge company like Disney. The over $200 million project is set to lose $115 million, according to Deadline [2], and holds a fairly dismal score of 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. Though a failure of this scale would usually be attributed to a myriad of factors – writing, direction, marketing, etc – internet users, and indeed, Disney themselves, seem to be eager to lay the blame solely at the feet of the film’s star, Rachel Zegler.
Controversy surrounding Zegler’s casting has been prevalent on the internet since a handful of comments she made about the film went viral. One interview where Zegler jokingly admitted she was ‘scared’ of the original cartoon as a child [3] prompted an almost comical amount of discussion – one X user wrote; ‘out of MILLIONS of women who loved the character, care about the story, and this is who we get. She could at least ACT like she cares about the material and the legacy’ [4]. In another interview, Zegler commented; ‘it’s no longer 1937, and we absolutely wrote a Snow White who is […] dreaming of becoming the leader she knows she can be’ [5]. Though maybe a slightly cheesy line, it certainly didn’t warrant the response it got, with one commenter calling Zegler’s remarks ‘straight-up unforgivable’ another writing ‘as a life long Disney fan this is heartbreaking’, and some taking to X to say things like ‘Rachel Zegler is completely unlikeable and an insufferable narcissist’ [6].
If these seem like completely over-the-top responses to some pretty innocuous comments, that’s because they are. More to the point, an actor’s suitability to play a character is not determined by how much they like the original character, it’s determined by how well they can play the part. The simmering resentment people seem to hold for Zegler is not really because they’re bothered that she was afraid of Snow White as a child, it’s because they’re bothered about the fact that she is a woman of colour. Again, discussion of this has been rampant on X, with users saying things like; ‘how does Disney make a movie where the evil queen is hot but Snow White is ugly AF ’ [7], dubbing the film ‘Snow woke’ [8] and ‘Snow Brown’ [9] – one post with almost 40 thousand likes reads; ‘Snow White is now brown because the filmmakers view the character’s whiteness as a flaw to be fixed. It’s anti-white racism and should be called such’ [10].
Disney has done little to nothing to protect Rachel Zegler from the vitriol directed her way or to defend their choice in casting her. This lack of action suddenly made perfect sense on the 25th of March, following the disastrous opening weekend of Snow White, when Variety published an article titled ‘Inside Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Fiasco: Death Threats, Beefed-Up Security and a Social Media Guru for Rachel Zegler’ [11]. The article details how Disney executives reportedly grew frustrated with Zegler when she posted ‘free Palestine’ on X – so much so that producer Marc Platt flew out to tell Zegler to take the post down, which she refused to do. This incident is not the only grievance Variety airs with Zegler; among other things, the article bemoans an incident where Zegler ‘complained’ about not being invited to the Oscars – ‘even though she wasn’t nominated’, in the words of Variety. This is a completely bad-faith retelling of a joke Zegler made regarding her invite to the Oscars, where despite the fact that she had starred in Best Picture nominee West Side Story, she was not invited to the ceremony – which is not typically custom for the academy [12]. However, when twisted as it was, it fit the agenda of the article perfectly – Zegler, apparently, is to blame for the box office failure that Disney produced. Some fans hit back at Variety following the publishing of the article, with one fan posting; ‘hey @Variety why didn’t you mention rachel zegler having to literally move because grown men who wanted her dead for repeating what disney told her to say about a cartoon were showing up outside her home threatening her?’ [13]
Worth noting is the fact that the journalist behind said article, Tatiana Siegel, was also behind the hit article written about Melissa Barerra, the Scream actress who was fired for voicing her support for Palestine [14]. There seems to be a wider agenda at play here – not just an anti-Rachel Zegler one, but an anti-Palestine one. Hollywood is clearly not fond of its stars sharing pro-Palestine sentiment. However, the Variety article seems to have no issue with Zegler’s Snow White costar Gal Gadot’s continuous support of Israel or the two years she spent serving in the IDF [15]. Siegel writes that ‘many inside the studio express[ed] shock that [Zegler] would commingle the […] $270 million tentpole with any kind of political statement.’ This begs the question – are politics only unacceptable when they’re pro-Palestine politics?
Sources
[1] Rubin, Rebecca. 2025. “‘Working Man’ Beats ‘Snow White’ at Box Office, Disney Film Drop.” Variety. March 30, 2025. https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/jason-statham-working-man-beats-snow-white-box-office-second-weekend-decline-1236347459/.
[2] D’Alessandro, Anthony. 2025. “‘Snow White’ Bombs: $115 Million Loss after Zegler Controversy, Box Office.” Deadline. March 31, 2025. https://deadline.com/2025/03/snow-white-bombs-rachel-zegler-1236354912/.
[3] Contributor. 2025. “Rachel Zegler: The Built-in Misogyny and Racism of Hollywood Controversies.” The Butler Collegian. April 9, 2025. https://thebutlercollegian.com/2025/04/rachel-zegler-the-built-in-misogyny-and-racism-of-hollywood-controversies/.
[4] X, 2023https://x.com/Vara_Dark/status/1689780588738215936
[5] Youtube, 2022https://youtu.be/2RVg3yetTE4?si=IO_yD90nFW-zv62x
[6] X, 2025 https://x.com/theshekinahgray/status/1905419330658893839
[7] X, 2025 https://x.com/LETSGOMETS024/status/1890456437089792453
[8] X, 2025 https://x.com/loganf2119/status/1890451119442165863
[9] X, 2025https://x.com/JustAVet4/status/1896664362863169720
[10] X, 2023 https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1681013621017440258
[11] Siegel, Tatiana. 2025. “Disney’s Snow White Fiasco: Death Threats and Zegler’s Social Media Guru.” Variety. March 25, 2025. https://variety.com/2025/film/news/snow-white-death-threats-zegler-social-media-guru-1236347433/.
[12] Carras, Christi. 2022. “Oscars: Why ‘West Side Story’ Star Rachel Zegler Not Invited.” Los Angeles Times. March 20, 2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-03-20/oscars-2022-rachel-zegler-west-side-story.
[13] X, 2025 https://x.com/westsideshark/status/1904610294849994793
[14] Siegel, Tatiana. 2023. “Spyglass Says Melissa Barrera Was Fired from ‘Scream’ due to Rhetoric That ‘Flagrantly Crosses the Line into Hate Speech’ (EXCLUSIVE).” Variety. November 22, 2023. https://variety.com/2023/film/news/scream-producers-explain-melissa-barrera-fired-antisemitism-1235804914/.
[15] McTaggart, India. 2025. “Snow White’s ‘Gal Gadot’s Security Increased’ after Rachel Zegler’s Gaza Tweet.” The Telegraph. March 26, 2025. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/26/disney-boosted-gal-gadot-security-after-rachel-zegler-tweet/?ICID=continue_without_subscribing_reg_first.
