The Entire Rachel Zegler Snow White Movie Controversy, Explained
Disney has been making live-action remakes of their classic animated films for some time now — and while they've basically printed money at the box office for Disney, fans also think they've got some serious problems. The live-action version of "Snow White" hasn't even been released yet — though it will in 2025 — and it's already stirring up controversy.
Directed by Marc Webb ("500 Days of Summer," Andrew Garfield's "The Amazing Spider-Man" films) and co-written by Greta Gerwig and Erin Cressida Wilson ("Secretary," "The Girl on the Train"), the upcoming "Snow White" live-action adaptation casts Rachel Zegler — known for leading roles in Steven Spielberg's 2021 take on "West Side Story" and "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" — as the classic Disney princess, who eats a poisoned apple and finds herself surrounded by curious dwarves in a remote cabin. The story is familiar at this point, but it sounds like Webb and Zegler are bringing some new flair to their version, and people have been yelling about it on the Internet ever since Zegler's casting was announced.
So why are there so many controversies surrounding "Snow White?" Which are legitimate concerns, and which ones are disturbing dog-whistles? Here are a few of the "problems" people have raised about Webb and Zegler's modern fairytale.
First, people were upset to see Rachel Zegler cast as Snow White
The first controversy — and perhaps the most appalling — came simply due to the fact that Rachel Zegler was chosen to play Snow White. Zegler, an actress of Polish and Colombian descent, is a woman of color, and bad faith actors came out of the woodwork in droves to decry the fact that she's playing a Disney princess named "Snow White." (We will not be reposting those critiques here.)
For her part, Zegler handled this insulting outcry with grace and resilience. While speaking to Andrew Garfield for Variety's "Actors on Actors" series, Zegler noted that audiences rarely see the character of Snow White played by Latina performers, despite the fact that the character is extremely popular in Spanish-speaking countries (she name-checks "Blancanieves," a 2012 black-and-white silent film based on the fairytale that was a huge success in Spain). "But you don't particularly see people who look like me or are me playing roles like that," Zegler said, before saying, "When it was announced, it was a huge thing that was trending on Twitter for days, because all of the people were angry."
Zegler is, unfortunately, correct, but her outlook remains positive: "At the end of the day, I have a job to do that I'm really excited to do. I get to be a Latina princess."
Peter Dinklage ultimately weighed in on the use of dwarves in Snow White
Not every critique of the upcoming "Snow White" movie is in complete bad faith, though; some people have legitimate concerns. One such person is Emmy-winning actor Peter Dinklage, who appeared alongside Rachel Zegler in "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" and is famously outspoken about roles for actors with dwarfism — and specifically, how to avoid tokenizing said actors. (Dinklage famously turned down roles as elves for years before earning success as Tyrion Lannister on "Game of Thrones," where he plays a character with dwarfism ... and he had to be convinced to play Tyrion due to concerns that he'd be playing a stereotype.)
During a 2022 interview with Marc Maron on the comedian's podcast "WTF," Dinklage said, "I was a little taken aback by [the fact] they were very proud to cast a Latina actress [Zegler] as Snow White, but you're still telling the story of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.' You're progressive in one way but you're still making that f***ing backward story of seven dwarves living in the cave."
On-set photos of the "dwarves" ultimately leaked, showing that only one of the performers has a form of dwarfism ... but even that caused an outcry that the movie was too "woke." The "Snow White" film can't win every single battle, but Dinklage definitely had a point — and hopefully, the production did take his words into consideration.
Even Rachel Zegler worried about potentially excessive CGI in Snow White
Then there's the issue of heavy CGI, a problem that's affected pretty much all of the Disney live-action films — largely because they all contain magical, fantastical elements that work beautifully in classic Disney animation but can feel unsettling weird when made by a computer. (Take, for example, the live-action take on "The Lion King," which often felt like a trip to the uncanny valley rather than an adventure near Pride Rock.)
In a different Variety "Actors on Actors" interview — this time with Halle Bailey, who faced her own backlash after being cast as Ariel in the live-action version of "The Little Mermaid" — Rachel Zegler admitted she was "nervous" about the movie's CGI.
"This is an iconic thing that people really care about," Zegler told her contemporary of the "Snow White" film. "I don't want to mess this up for anybody, including myself. The writers and [director] Marc Webb and our entire producing team...it's a bit different story wise. We were able to do 'Whistle While You Work,' which made me really happy and excited. I was really nervous more about the technical element. That first-look image went out... and there's a lot of CGI in the film."
As Zegler told Bailey, filming "Whistle While You Work" felt bizarre because she was singing it to, well, nobody ... although she knew Bailey would understand. "I'm sure you also know how that can be," she said. "There was a lot of puppetry and CGI in post. It was really intense. There's a lot of bloopers of me tossing a broom and letting it fall to the ground because that's apparently how you toss things off to CGI characters." Ultimately, though, Zegler skewed positive once again: "But it's so much fun!"
At the end of the day, Rachel Zegler will make a great Snow White — controversies notwithstanding
The final controversy to address here, albeit briefly, is that Rachel Zegler also got into some hot water over comments about modernizing Snow White's story. In late 2022, she told Vanity Fair, "People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it's like, yeah, it is—because it needed that. It's an 85-year-old cartoon, and our version is a refreshing story about a young woman who has a function beyond 'Someday My Prince Will Come.'" This led to outcry from the son of a former Disney employee, who described the mere concept as an updated take on the tale as a "disgrace" to The Telegraph. Still, Zegler has a point; in the original story, "Snow White" does some chores, falls asleep, and then wakes up thanks to true love's kiss. She could use more to do in a modern version.
Zegler kicked off her career in 2021 when she was chosen, as an unknown actress, to lead Steven Spielberg's stunning reboot of "West Side Story," and she's been racking up high-profile roles ever since. With her gorgeous singing voice and commanding on-screen presence, Zegler has already proven she can play a classic musical theater heroine, a down-and-out girl in a dystopian world, and even a superhero (in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"). There's no question that she'll play an excellent Snow White, controversies be damned.