Just a few days ago, and shortly after it looked like “Snow White” was inevitably going to bomb in theaters, I mentioned how Disney was no doubt getting ready to throw Rachel Zegler to the wolves. Well, they’ve done just that.
Disney needed a scapegoat for the “Snow White” debacle, and Zegler was the most obvious target. The Mouse House did the exact same thing “The Marvels” director Nia DaCosta, right after her film bombed, leaking to the trades about her inexperienced behavior on and off-set.
Now, whether Zegler deserves the full blame for “Snow White” is not for me to say, but she certainly didn’t help. A Variety report, filled with anonymous sources, most likely Disney-connected, paints Zegler as irresponsible, and quite frankly, erratic in behavior during the promotion of “Snow White.”
The story goes that Zegler’s critical comments about the original ‘Snow White’ caught many people at Disney off-guard, but the studio decided not to act up on it due to the “free speech” lawsuit that had been recently thrown at them by fired ‘Mandalorian’ star Gina Carano.
However, after Zegler hit the stage at Disney’s D23 fan event to introduce the first official trailer of “Snow White,” she quickly posted on X, thanking supporters only to conclude with “and always remember, free Palestine.” Many inside Disney “expressed shock” that Zegler would hijack the promotion of their $270M film with a political statement.
A Disney executive raised the studio’s concerns with Zegler’s team, while the film’s producer Marc Platt flew to New York to speak directly with her. But Zegler stood her ground, and the post remained.
Behind the scenes, Variety’s (Disney) sources go on to insinuate that Zegler’s comments caused death threats toward Zegler’s co-star Gal Gadot, who is Israeli, to spike, which led to Disney having to pay for additional security for the mother of four.
“She didn’t understand the repercussions of her actions as far as what that meant for the film, for Gal, for anyone,” says one insider.
Things only worsened the following few months. Only days after Donald Trump won the Presidency in November, Zegler posted “Fuck Donald Trump” and “May Trump supporters never know peace.” This led to Disney paying for a "social media guru" to work with Zegler and to vet posts before “Snow White” opened in theaters.
Zegler’s comments came only a year after the actress slammed the original 1937 classic, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’ as “weird” and “creepy,” adding that the character’s love interest, the prince, was a “stalker.” She’s also described the upcoming remake as “PC Snow White.”
Clearly, something changed in Zegler after Disney’s hiring of the “social media guru”. The ‘Snow White’ star began to completely reverse course on her previous comments. Not only did she apologize to Trump supporters, but she even went on to compliment her many haters as “beautiful” and “passionate” fans.
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.