Rachel Zegler on Reinventing Snow White and Juliet and Facing Off Against Toxic Disney Fans: ‘I’ve Watched Women Get Torn Down My Whole Life’

“Spoiler alert: I die,” Rachel Zegler says.

You’ll have to forgive the 23-year-old actress for giving away the ending to her next project. But to be fair, it’s been 400 years since a certain Englishman wrote the play in which she’s making her Broadway debut.

On Oct. 24, following a month of previews, Zegler will take the stage as Juliet in director Sam Gold’s revival of Shakespeare’s best-known romance. Things are going to get intense for her and her Romeo, played by “Heartstopper” star Kit Connor — after all, the tagline for the production reads, “The youth are f**ked.”

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In other words, you won’t see them donning tunics or Elizabethan ruffs. Gold’s vision leans heavily into the culture of its Gen Z cast: Zegler says he originally pitched the project to her as “‘Romeo and Juliet’ if it was set in Troye Sivan’s ‘Rush’ music video.”

Zegler offers her own take. “Juliet would be having a brat girl summer,” she says, joking that, like Charli XCX and Lorde, the Montagues and Capulets will “work it out in the revival.”

Despite that 21st-century edge — and new music from pop super-producer Jack Antonoff — Gold is sticking to the original text. “It’s 100% iambic pentameter,” Zegler says. “This is Shakespeare, and you’re sitting your ass down for the play.”

Since being plucked from her life as a high schooler in Hackensack, N.J., and handpicked by Steven Spielberg to play Maria in his 2021 remake of “West Side Story,” Zegler has become one of the decade’s shiniest new stars. She’s appeared in comic book adventures (“Shazam! Fury of the Gods”) and headlined a major franchise (“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes”). Now Zegler is about to become an icon for kids the world over, playing the title role in Disney’s live-action “Snow White,” which opens in theaters in March 2025. In some ways, playing the fairest of them all marks the end of an era for Zegler, while heading to Broadway marks the beginning of a new one: “I need to start thinking about the pivot,” she says. “I feel capable of being picky for the next thing.”

But Zegler’s meteoric rise has come with strings attached. For as long as she’s been famous, she’s been the subject of ruthless and relentless criticism. It began innocently enough, with petty jokes about her “theater kid energy,” but as Zegler’s fame increased, the complaints against her grew more sinister. When she playfully posted about not being invited to the 2022 Oscars despite “West Side Story” earning seven nominations, she was called ungrateful and entitled. For admitting that she took the role in the “Shazam!” sequel because she needed the money, she was seen as tacky and in need of media training. And every time she speaks up about racism and sexism in the entertainment industry, she’s slammed as just another “DEI hire,” coasting on her identity rather than her talent.

She’s trying to have a sense of humor about the vitriol.

“Someone should kill you,” an X user wrote in August. “Fun fact i will be dying eight times a week on broadway this fall!!!!,” she replied, telling the hater to buy a ticket — then tagging the FBI.

“Being famous isn’t for the faint of heart,” Zegler says with a sigh.

When Zegler comes downstairs from her West Hollywood hotel room for breakfast, she’s wearing a floral maxi dress, her hair pulled up with an oversized claw clip to show off a pair of gold hoop earrings. It’s a sunny Saturday in August, and there’s no makeup on her face. The look is effortless, classic cool girl, and she blends in well with the clientele brunching at tables nearby. But these are not her people.

“The reason I fell in love with this industry is not because of this town,” she says, lowering her voice to evade the ears of the locals. “In fact, I kind of can’t stand this town. I don’t like that there’s a town built around the industry that I work in; it’s stifling and isolating and weird. In New York, nobody gives a fuck.”

Zegler’s love for the five boroughs only redoubled after a six-month shoot in the U.K. for “Snow White” followed by filming “The Hunger Games” in Poland. “It’s not until you have to go around the world filming in different cities that you realize how grateful you are for the diversity [of New York],” she says. “When I came home from my year in Europe, going to my bodega, where people speak in Spanish to me” — she’s performing her words, feigning heatstroke and rumbling with melodrama — “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I missed you, Enrique!’”

She’s giggling now. “And people really wear whatever the fuck they want. If I go out and I’m like, ‘Is this too fancy?,’ someone is definitely dressed more ridiculous than me, in the best way,” she says. She’s wearing a curious accessory of her own today: a “Sesame Street” fanny pack slung over one shoulder. It’s a nod to her ultimate career goal of becoming the sole human actor in a Muppets production. “Michael Caine did it for ‘Christmas Carol,’” she says. “Tim Curry did it for ‘Muppet Treasure Island.’ I want to be the one!”

That will have to wait though. For now, Zegler’s in her princess era. It’s been a mixed bag. Her appointment as the apple-eating stepdaughter of the evil queen drew instant ire online, with many promising to boycott the film due to the “woke” casting. To them, the actress’s Colombian heritage disqualified her from playing the princess from Disney’s 1937 musical fantasy, described as having hair as black as ebony and skin as white as snow. Never mind the fact that the character Blancanieves is just as popular in Spanish-speaking countries as she is in the U.S.

“She was my mom’s favorite princess,” Zegler says. “When she was growing up, there weren’t a lot of dark-haired princesses, and that was the one she could relate to.”

It’s no surprise that “Snow White” director Marc Webb wanted Zegler for the role from the moment she read for the part. He says his script supervisor “wept” upon hearing her singing voice. “But she also has an inherent grace, poise and goodness that reminds me so much of what is essential to Snow White,” he says.

So Zegler doesn’t bother trying to understand why it’s so hard for some of those die-hard “Disney adults” to picture a Latina in their beloved princess’s shoes. She’s making a children’s movie after all, and she remembers spending her own childhood obsessing over ABC’s 1997 TV movie that starred Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother alongside an 18-year-old Brandy as Cinderella.

“I grew up in a house where that was Cinderella. Obviously, we watched the cartoon. But a child’s mind is the most amazing thing, where it’s just like, ‘OK, that’s Cinderella,’” she says. “But the blond-haired, blue-eyed, blue-dress Cinderella from the 1950s cartoon is also Cinderella. Also, Hilary Duff is Cinderella in ‘A Cinderella Story.’” She smirks. “I was able to comprehend those things at a young age.”

“I know Rachel will be absolutely incredible in this role,” Brandy says in an email, 26 years after her star turn in “Cinderella.” She’s also got some advice for Zegler as she faces the barrage of negativity over her casting. “You’re not taking on this role to fit the mold of the critics,” she writes. “You’re doing this for every little Colombian girl who has yet to see themselves in a role like a Disney princess. You’re doing this for the little girl that you once were, who grew up without that representation of her Colombian culture. You are showing her that anything is possible for someone who looks like her, and that is the most important job in the world.”

As for that line about “skin as white as snow,” Zegler reveals that the new film has its own origin story for her name. “It fell back to another version of ‘Snow White’ that was told in history, where she survived a snowstorm that occurred when she was a baby,” she says. “And so the king and queen decided to name her Snow White to remind her of her resilience. One of the core points in our film for any young woman or young person is remembering how strong you actually are.”

The social media outrage about Zegler being cast as Snow White only got louder as time went on. She began saying in red-carpet interviews in the summer of 2022 that her version of the iconic princess wouldn’t spend her days pining over a man. She called aspects of the original story “weird” and said that the 1937 film’s prince “literally stalks” Snow White. Overnight, online trolls took shots at Zegler’s “disdain” for the animated classic, deeming her unworthy of portraying the OG Disney heroine.

She grows somber recalling the hate that erupted during that time. “In all honesty, it made me sad that it was taken in such a way, because I believe that women can do anything. But I also believe that they can do everything,” Zegler says. What she’d meant to convey was that Snow White wants romance but has other goals too.

“I would never want to box someone in and say, ‘If you want love, then you can’t work.’ Or ‘If you want to work, then you can’t have a family.’ It’s not true. It’s never been true. It can be very upsetting when things get taken out of context or jokes don’t land,” Zegler says. “The love story is very integral. A lot of people wrote that we weren’t doing [that storyline] anymore — we were always doing that; it just wasn’t what we were talking about on that day.”

Zegler’s not surprised by what she sees as people’s willful misunderstanding of her comments. It’s par for the course for an outspoken young woman in the public eye. “I’ve watched women get torn down my whole life, my whole career,” she says. “We’ll watch it in the election that’s upcoming. We’re gonna witness that for a long time, I fear. Sometimes it can feel like we’re going back; it certainly felt that way when that was happening.”

Zegler isn’t immune to the harsh criticism, even if her bubbly demeanor makes her seem that way. Though she’s been tempted to stay off social media, she won’t. “I don’t like to give them the satisfaction of knowing they hurt me in the moment,” she says. “You give them a lot of power by taking a social media break.”

Logging off would also make it harder to speak up for the causes she cares about.

During the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023, Zegler championed protections against the potential dangers of artificial intelligence — a threat that felt personal: She’d already had something like “465 photos taken of every corner of my body” for use in CG stunts. “It was fucking dystopian,” she says. “I was really scared of being replaced by an artificial intelligence version of myself that they scanned when I was 18 and then never being able to work on a set again. What was stopping them from using that for the rest of my life?”

Over the past year, Zegler has also been an advocate for Palestinians, and as expected, her comments have been put under a microscope. Just one day after appearing at D23 in August, where Zegler teed up the first footage from “Snow White” for a crowd of adoring fans, she posted a note of gratitude on X. But it was the last line of her post that drew the most attention: “And always remember, free palestine.”

“Rachel Zegler Stirs More Controversy,” read a Fox News headline. Newsweek wrote that Zegler was on a “collison course” with her co-star Gal Gadot, who had served two years as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces before making it as an actress.

“I can’t watch children die,” Zegler says. “I don’t think that should be a hot take.” She knows that it’s not that simple, but she tries to tune out all the noise that blares around her every time she speaks out. “I’m only responsible for what I feel. And then I’m also responsible for how I act upon it,” she says. “We’re nearing one year since the horrendous attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, but I’ve been following this conflict for so many years. Like so many people, I’m so heartbroken by the loss of life that we’re seeing with these insane death tolls coming out of both regions.”

Despite the blowback, Zegler wants to continue to use her platform to advocate for the Palestinian people. “I don’t have the answers,” she says. “I don’t think any celebrity making a political statement has the answers. But we have the platform to share a donation link to make sure that these people get the money, the care and the aid that they need that people in power aren’t giving them. If that means that it can fall upon us to be in power in a way that is helpful, then I’m happy to do it.”

Zegler was initially hesitant to accept the role on Broadway. She worried that playing Juliet would just feel like doing Maria again. “And I didn’t want to be boxed into that part for the rest of time,” she says. The Spielberg film, Zegler adds, has defined the past five years of her life. “Thankfully so,” she says. “It’s an amazing piece, and it was an amazing job. But you’re ready to move on at some point.”

There have been momentary departures from traditionally girly roles: A24’s upcoming disaster comedy “Y2K” offered Zegler the chance to “flex the comedy chops and curse on film” while playing Laura, a teenage computer genius, even if she’s still a popular girl being pined over by a male protagonist. And in “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” though Lucy Gray Baird is a romantic lead with a beautiful voice, the character fights for her life with an attitude Zegler describes as “iron-fisted” and “a little bit terrifying.”

Even though she’s still in the early years of her career, Zegler has tried to fight against being typecast. “I feel like nobody wanted me to do anything different,” she says. “Even the Broadway offers I was getting were like, ‘Do you want to be Guenevere in “Camelot”’? There’s a lot of interest there, but it would be another soprano, the thing that everybody’s already seen me do. It would have been an honor, but I need to think about the longevity of a career.”

Zegler says she “locked into” the character of Juliet for the first time after Gold instructed her to “keep it in mind that 13-year-olds are way older than they used to be.” She says, “That was life-changing for me to hear. I remember what it was like being 13 and thinking I was smarter than my parents, my brain moving faster than my mouth ever could.”

And Zegler wasn’t just interested in brushing up on the Bard when she took the role — she admits to having an ulterior motive. “It keeps me in New York,” she says. “I love an excuse to be home.”

These days, home is an apartment on the Lower East Side shared with a miniature golden­doodle named Lenny — in honor of legendary “West Side Story” composer Leonard Bernstein. Her second love is her boyfriend (and “West Side Story” and “Hunger Games” co-star) Josh Andrés Rivera. After brunch, she’ll fly back to New York to see them both, her much-needed support system before she begins “Romeo + Juliet” rehearsals in two days. “I have the same panic attack the night before I start anything,” she says. “I just want to be good. I just want to be enough, and I want to be right for it.”

As for her personal life, she abides by a more traditional definition of happily ever after — which might come as a surprise to those who interpreted her comments about “Snow White” not needing a prince as man-hating. “Honestly, my goal is to get married, have kids and retreat at some point,” Zegler says. “And get to do the thing where I come out every couple years and make something and have it hopefully be really special and celebrated and then go back.”

Zegler finds marriage and motherhood to be compatible with her feminist persona; the idea of her own private fairy tale is what keeps her feet on the ground. “What I’ve learned, if I’ve learned anything in the past couple years, is that the love I have in my life is way more important than any accolade. It’s what’s kept me from —” Zegler surprises herself, tears springing forward. “Sorry,” she whispers. She swallows, then speaks through it. “It’s what’s kept me from doing anything stupid.”

Like giving up on all of this — this abundant, creative life she always dreamed of — for good.

“There have been times where I’m just like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’” she says. “My mere existence has served as an education for people that don’t have a basic sense of empathy. And that can really make you want to disappear.”

Zegler pokes a fork at the small bowl of fruit in front of her, but her mind is on the East Coast. She pictures the house she’ll buy one day — back in Jersey or in upstate New York, with a yard for Lenny to run around in — before looking back up.

“My family raised me to just be grateful for the quiet,” she says. “I look forward to the quiet. Those are the moments I feel most like myself.”

Styling: Sarah Slutsky Tooley/The Wall Group; Makeup: Kale Teter/The Wall Group using Dior Makeup; Hair: David Von Cannon/A Frame Agency; Manicure: Maki Sakamoto/The Wall Group; Look 1 (doorway): Top and skirt: Christian Cowan; Shoes: Jimmy Choo; Socks: Falke; Ear cuff, earrings and rings: Jemma Wynne; Look 2 (cover): Top, dress and shorts: Christian Dior; Ear cuffs: Jemma Wynne; Rings: Sethi couture; Look 3 (pink background): Dress: Coperni; Earrings and rings: Eva Fehren; Look 4 (white top, grey shirt): Top, skirt and shoes: Marc Jacobs; Earrings and rings: Foundrae; Ring: Marlo Laz