Rachel Zegler being cast as the titular character in Disney’s upcoming live-action adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has been under scrutiny ever since it was announced.
The 22-year-old actor is of Colombian and Polish descent and initially faced racist backlash from people who argued that the princess should be played by a white actor.
But the negative reaction toward Rachel has only intensified in recent weeks after some of her comments about the movie, which is slated for release in March, resurfaced online.
In September, Rachel criticized the character of Prince Charming in the original film as she hinted that the adaptation will have more of a feminist undertone.
Speaking at the D23 Expo, she told ExtraTV: “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.”
Rachel added to Variety: “We absolutely wrote a Snow White that... she’s not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be, and that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave, and true.”
In addition to these comments, Rachel’s confession that she only watched Snow White once as a child — and that it had terrified her — also came to light recently.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly back in December, the star explained: “I was scared of the original version. I think I watched it once and never picked it up again. I’m being so serious.”
“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,” Rachel went on. “I was terrified of it, never revisited Snow White again.”
“I watched it for the first time in probably 16, 17 years when I was doing this film,” she concluded.
And Rachel’s open criticism of the 1937 movie has caused a stir, with many slamming the actor for her approach to the live-action remake. She has been called a “walking PR disaster for Disney,” and even accused of “shaming anyone who liked” the animated original.
Others have drawn attention to some industry double standards, with a popular tweet pointing out that male actors have been celebrated for speaking out against their popular movie projects in the past.
This tweet has racked up over 90,000 likes since it was posted on Monday, and has close to 8,000 retweets at the time of writing.
Landing the role of Han Solo in the 1970s kickstarted Harrison Ford’s huge career, but he has admitted that he has never been a fan of the Star Wars character and even wanted him to be killed off early in the franchise.
Harrison previously told Starpulse that Han Solo was “relatively thin,” and added to Entertainment Weekly: “He’s got a good heart but I think he’s certainly a much less interesting character than Indiana Jones. He’s dumb as a stump. Han Solo was very good to me at a certain point in my career. But I’m done. I’m done with him.”
And Robert Pattinson has been even more vocal about his true feelings towards the Twilight movie franchise, which catapulted him to global superstardom in the 2000s. Robert played the role of Edward Cullen, and he repeatedly criticized both his character and the story during the promo tours for the films.
In fact, Robert even criticized the author of the books that the movies were based on, Stephenie Meyer, and claimed that the stories were actually her “sexual fantasy” that he was “uncomfortable” to read.
He told E!: “When I read it, I was convinced Stephenie was convinced she was Bella and it was like it was a book that wasn’t supposed to be published. It was like reading her sexual fantasy, especially when she said it was based on a dream."
“Like, some things about Edward are so specific, I was just convinced, like, ‘This woman is mad. She’s completely mad and she’s in love with her own fictional creation.’ And sometimes you would feel uncomfortable reading this thing,” Robert went on.
While promoting the fourth film, Breaking Dawn, Robert was asked by Moviefone if he would be a fan of the franchise if he didn’t star in it, to which he admitted: "I think I am a judgmental and cynical person who would just mindlessly hate it without having seen anything; I just think I’m a bad person."
He also called the romance between his character and the protagonist, Bella, “a nightmare,” and that the overall story “doesn’t make sense.” He later told Vanity Fair that he “can’t really understand” why people are fans of the story, and even suggested that he’d lost his “dignity” while filming the movies.
