Rachel Zegler sparks controversy about love among ‘Snow White’ fans
- “Snow White” actress Rachel Zegler is under fire for her comments about the upcoming film.
- Zegler, who plays the titular character, has suggested in multiple interviews that she isn’t a fan of the Disney princess.
- “If you hate the original this much, why would you want to make the remake?” a TikTok user said.
Rachel Zegler, who plays the titular character in Disney’s upcoming “Snow White” remake, is under fire for her condescending comments about the film.
Resurfaced interview clips revealed that Zegler has suggested multiple times that she wasn’t a fan of the original Disney princess, much to the ire of the internet.
In a December 2022 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Zegler admitted that she’s only seen the original animated film once and didn’t really enjoy it.
“I was scared of the original version. I think I watched it once and never picked it up again. I’m being so serious,” Zegler said in the interview alongside Gal Gadot, who plays the Evil Queen.
“I watched it once, and then I went on the ride in Disney World, which was called ‘Snow White’s Scary Adventures.’ Doesn’t sound like something a little kid would like. I was terrified of it, never revisited Snow White again,” Zegler said.
In another interview from September 2022, the actress displayed her scorn for the plot of the original animated film because it went against what she thought of as modern feminist values.
“I just mean that it’s no longer 1937,” Zegler told Variety when asked about what she meant when she said she was bringing a modern edge to the character.
“She’s not going to be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love,” Zegler added. “She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and the leader that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave, and true.”
In another interview with Extra TV, Zegler calls the prince in the original film “a stalker,” and even goes so far as to say that her co-star Andrew Burnap’s scenes as the Prince might be cut from the film.
“The original cartoon came out in 1937, and very evidently so. There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird! Weird! So we didn’t do that this time,” Zegler said in the interview.
“We have a different approach to what I’m sure a lot of people will assume is a love story just because we cast a guy in the movie,” Zegler continued in the Extra TV interview. “All of Andrew’s scenes could get cut, who knows? It’s Hollywood, baby!”
Many TikTok users have slammed the actress for her lack of appreciation for a potentially life-changing role, while calling her out for her pseudo-feminism.
In a video that’s been viewed over 9.2 million times since it was posted five days ago, TikTok user Angie, who goes by the handle @cosywithangie, criticizes Zegler for failing to acknowledge that women have the right to pursue whatever they want — including love.
“It is not anti-feminist to want to fall in love, to want to get married, to want to stay at home, to be soft, to want to be a homemaker. None of these things makes you less valuable as a person or a woman,” Angie said in a video stitched with a clip from Zegler’s Variety interview.
“Criticising Disney princesses is not feminist. Not every woman is a leader. Not every woman wants to be a leader. Not every woman wants or craves power and that’s ok,” Angie continued in her video.
“Thinking that a woman is any less valuable because she falls in love or because she accepts help from somebody instead of girl-bossing her way through her problems is not feminist,” she added.
Angie’s TikTok video has been liked by over 1.5 million people so far.
Another video, posted by a Tiktok user @nuttybutter96, called Zegler out for accepting the titular role despite her disdain for the character.
“If you hate the original this much, why would you want to make the remake. Pls make it make sense,” the TikTok user said in her caption.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a condescending, smug, Disney princess ever in my life,” the TikTok user said in her video. “She made us sound like women only matter if they’re hateful of love, hateful of any kind of romance, and we only exist to thrive and be a leader.”
The TikTok video has been viewed over 5.1 million times and liked by almost 470,000 people since it was uploaded two days ago.
But some fans have rushed to Zegler’s defense on social media. One Twitter user Lottie who goes by the handle @waitforme_II took to the platform — now known as X — to declare that the hate for the actress “is genuinely some of the stupidest shit” on the app.
“She made one comment about how Snow White has ambitions of her own that has nothing to do with romance, and suddenly everyone decided that women being damsels in distress is feminist, actually,” she wrote in the tweet, which has been liked 44 times.
This is not the first time that the Disney remake has sparked controversy.
As Insider previously reported in July, some photos from the movie set appear to confirm that the film is ditching the seven dwarfs, with many internet users slamming Disney for not including actors who are part of the dwarfism community in the film.
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