In the year since the live-action Snow White film set off several waves of controversy, Rachel Zegler has had some time to process everything. From the racist backlash to Zegler’s casting to the movie’s poor performance getting blamed on her pro-Palestine comments, it was obviously not an easy time. Now, however, she’s gathered her thoughts and has come to the obvious solution to all that drama: She should have just chucked her phone into the sea.
Zegler is on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar U.K. this month and spoke about her time in the Snow White trenches. The controversy around the movie started as soon as she was cast in 2021, when conservatives declared that she couldn’t be Snow White on account of not having “skin as white as snow.” Zegler, who is of Colombian and Polish descent, told the magazine that the reaction surprised her.
“I was told I wasn’t enough of one thing for West Side Story and too much of another for Snow White,” she said, seemingly referring to the people who believed she wasn’t Latina enough to play Maria in the 2021 Steven Spielberg film. “It was a really confusing time to be in my early twenties and hearing that. I grew up proud of being Colombian.” She added, “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.”
Zegler also addressed the backlash she got for sharing her political views ahead of the movie’s release. At one point, she replied to a tweet with the trailer for Snow White with a post that read, “and always remember, free Palestine,” which reportedly prompted producer Marc Platt to personally chastise her. It sounds like that didn’t shake her too much.
“I’ve said what I feel, and that will always be a testament to my core beliefs as a human. That’s where I stand,” Zegler told the magazine of her public support for Palestine, noting that the situation she found herself in was “a complete study in intent versus impact.” “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.”
Now that she’s more removed from the situation, Zegler said that she might have handled things a little differently had she foreseen all of the controversy. “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,” she said. “I think any sane person would have.” Given everything she went through, I think we can all agree on that.