- Rachel Zegler broke through the mainstream thanks to her role as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story reboot.
- She eventually played the titular character in Disney’s live-action Snow White in 2025.
- She recently reflected on the backlash she got for both films during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK.
Rachel Zegler has proven she’s a pop culture powerhouse thanks to roles in The Hunger Games prequel, The Battle of Songbirds and Snakes, and Romeo and Juliet on Broadway. However, the road to such recognition wasn’t always smooth, as the multi-hyphenate faced backlash once she was cast as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and Disney’s live-action Snow White.
After years of receiving hate from conservative naysayers who claimed she was too Latine for Snow White and too white for West Side Story, the actor opened up about the backlash during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK.
Rachel, who’s of Colombian heritage, said the initial reaction to each casting was “really confusing” as she navigated the early days of her career.
“I was told I wasn’t enough of one thing for West Side Story and too much of another for Snow White,” she said, later adding, “I grew up proud of being Colombian.”
The Y2K star continued, “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 spoke about her “cancellation” during a candid conversation with fellow New Jerseyan Jack Antonoff for her Cosmopolitan cover story in 2024.
“You got fucking canceled?” Jack asked, to which Rachel said, “For being brown. For having brown skin. For playing Snow White. There was a lot of harassment from a certain group of people—they were showing up at my apartment and screaming profanities.”
At the time, she said that she would respond to hateful comments “where I wanted to, in a way that made it seem like it was tongue in cheek. Then it got to a point where it was not funny anymore and I really hated myself for something that other people were telling me about myself. But my ability to bounce back from that and still be passionate about the work I did for that project is something that I admire about myself.”
