//Rachel Z-e-g-l-e-r on Reinventing Snow White and Juliet and Facing Off Against Toxic Disney Fans: ‘I’ve Watched Women Get Torn Down My Whole Life’////

"Heads up: I kick the bucket," Rachel Zegler says.

You'll need to pardon the 23-year-old entertainer for offering the closure of her next project. Yet, as a matter of fact, it's been a long time since a specific British bloke composed the play in which she's making her Broadway debut.

    ‘Romeo and Juliet’ if it was set in Troye Sivan’s ‘Rush’ music video.”

On Oct. 24, following a month of reviews, Zegler will make that big appearance as Juliet in chief Sam Gold's restoration of Shakespeare's most popular sentiment. Things will get serious for herself as well as her Romeo, played by "Heartstopper" star Unit Connor — all things considered, the slogan for the creation peruses, "The adolescent are f**ked."In different words, you won't see them wearing tunics or Elizabethan ruffs. Gold's vision inclines vigorously into the way of life of its Gen Z cast: Zegler says he initially pitched the task to her as "'Romeo and Juliet' on the off chance that it was set in Troye Sivan's 'Rush' music video."Zegler offers her own take. "Juliet would have a rascal young lady summer," she says, kidding that, as Charli XCX and Lorde, the Montagues and Capulets will "sort out it in the restoration."

Regardless of that 21st-century edge — and new music from pop super-maker Jack Antonoff — Gold is adhering to the first text. "It's 100 percent poetic pattern," Zegler says. "This is Shakespeare, and you're putting your butt down for the play."

      OK McCausland for Variety

Since being culled from her life as a high schooler in Hackensack, N.J., and handpicked by Steven Spielberg to play Maria in his 2021 redo of "West Side Story," Zegler has become one of the ten years' shiniest new stars. She's showed up in comic book experiences ("Shazam! Rage of the Divine beings") and featured a significant establishment ("The Yearning Games: The Melody of Larks and Snakes"). Presently Zegler is going to turn into a symbol for youngsters the world over, playing the lead spot in Disney's surprisingly realistic "Snow White," which opens in venues in Walk 2025. Somehow or another, playing the most attractive of all denotes the conclusion of a significant time period for Zegler, while going to Broadway denotes the start of another one: "I really want to begin contemplating the turn," she says. "I feel equipped for being finicky for the following thing."

Be that as it may, Zegler's transient ascent has accompanied surprises. However long she's been well known, she's been the subject of merciless and steady analysis. It started guiltlessly enough, with insignificant kids about her "theater kid energy," however as Zegler's acclaim expanded, the grumblings against her developed more vile. At the point when she energetically posted about not being welcome to the 2022 Oscars in spite of "West Side Story" acquiring seven assignments, she was called unreasonable and entitled. For conceding that she played the job in the "Shazam!" spin-off in light of the fact that she wanted the cash, she was viewed as tasteless and needing media preparing. Furthermore, every time she makes some noise about prejudice and sexism in media outlets, she's rammed as simply one more "DEI recruit," drifting on her personality as opposed to her ability.

She's attempting to have a funny bone about the bitterness.

"Somebody ought to kill you," a X client wrote in August. "Fun truth I will be biting the dust eight times each week on broadway this fall!!!!," she answered, advising the critic to purchase a ticket — then, at that point, labeling the FBI.

"Being popular isn't for weak willed," Zegler says with a murmur.

At the point when Zegler comes down the stairs from her West Hollywood lodging for breakfast, she's wearing a flower maxi dress, her hair pulled up with a larger than usual hook clasp to flaunt a couple of gold circle hoops. It's a radiant Saturday in August, and there's no cosmetics all over. The look is easy, exemplary cool young lady, and she mixes in well with the customer base brunching at tables close by. However, these are not her kin.

"The explanation I became hopelessly enamored with this industry isn't a direct result of this town," she says, turning down the volume to dodge the ears of local people. "I sort of can't stand this town, as a matter of fact. I could do without that there's a town worked around the business that I work in; it's smothering and detaching and odd. In New York, no one gives a fuck."Zegler's affection for the five precincts just increased following a six-month shoot in the U.K. for "Snow White" trailed by shooting "The Yearning Games" in Poland. "It's not until you need to circumvent the world shooting in various urban communities that you understand how appreciative you are for the variety [of New York]," she says. "At the point when I returned home from my year in Europe, going to my bodega, where individuals talk in Spanish to me" — she's playing out her words, faking heatstroke and thundering with acting — "I was like, 'Goodness, my God, I missed you, Enrique!'"

She's laughing at this point. "Also, individuals truly wear anything the screw they need. On the off chance that I go out and I'm like, 'Is this excessively extravagant?,' somebody is most certainly dressed more crazy than me, in the most effective way," she says. She's wearing her very own inquisitive extra today: a "Sesame Road" fanny pack threw north of one shoulder. It's a sign of approval for her definitive profession objective of turning into the sole human entertainer in a Muppets creation. "Michael Caine did it for 'holiday song,'" she says. "Tim Curry did it for 'Muppet Fortune Island.' I need to be the one!"

However, that should stand by. For the time being, Zegler's in her princess period. It's been a hodgepodge. Her arrangement as the apple-eating stepdaughter of the detestable sovereign drew moment wrath on the web, with many promising to blacklist the film due to the "woke" projecting. To them, the entertainer's Colombian legacy precluded her from playing the princess from Disney's 1937 melodic dream, depicted as having hair as dark as midnight and skin as completely white. Quit worrying about the way that the person Blancanieves is similarly as well known in Spanish-talking nations as she is in the U.S.

"She was my mother's #1 princess," Zegler says. "At the point when she was growing up, there weren't much of dull haired princesses, and that was the one she could connect with."

It's nothing unexpected that "Snow White" chief Marc Webb needed Zegler for the job from the second she read for the part. He says his content boss "sobbed" after hearing her performing voice. "Yet, she additionally has an inborn effortlessness, balance and goodness that helps me such a great amount to remember what is vital for Snow White," he says.

So Zegler sees no point in attempting to comprehend the reason why it's so difficult for a portion of those stalwart "Disney grown-ups" to picture a Latina in their dearest princess' shoes. She's making a youngsters' film all things considered, and she spent her own experience growing up fixating on ABC's 1997 television film that featured Whitney Houston as the divine helper close by a 18-year-old Cognac as Cinderella.

"I experienced childhood in a house where that was Cinderella. Clearly, we watched the animation. However, a kid's psyche is the most astounding thing, where it's very much like, 'alright, that is Cinderella,'" she says. "In any case, the light haired, blue-looked at, blue-dress Cinderella from the 1950s animation is additionally Cinderella. Likewise, Hilary Duff is Cinderella in 'A Cinderella Story.'" She grins. "I had the option to fathom those things early on."

"I realize Rachel will be totally mind blowing in this job," Cognac says in an email, 26 years after her star turn in "Cinderella." She's additionally got some guidance for Zegler as she faces the flood of cynicism over her projecting. "You're not taking on this job to fit the form of the pundits," she composes. "You're doing this for every single Colombian young lady who presently can't seem to see themselves in a job like a Disney princess. You're doing this for the young lady that you used to be, who grew up without that portrayal of her Colombian culture. You are showing her that the sky is the limit for somebody who seems to be her, and that is the main work on the planet."

Concerning that line about "skin as very white," Zegler uncovers that the new film has its own history for her name. "It fell back to one more variant of 'Snow White' that was told ever, where she endure a blizzard that happened when she was a child," she says. "Thus the ruler and sovereign chose to name her Snow White to help her to remember her versatility. One of the center places in our film for any young lady or youngster is recollecting the way in which solid you really are."

The virtual entertainment shock about Zegler being given a role as Snow White just got stronger as time went on. She started saying in honorary pathway interviews in the late spring of 2022 that her variant of the famous princess wouldn't go through her days pining over a man. She referred to parts of the first story as "strange" and said that the 1937 film's sovereign "in a real sense stalks" Snow White. Short-term, online savages went after Zegler's "scorn" for the vivified work of art, considering her dishonorable of depicting the OG Disney heroine.She becomes grave reviewing the disdain that emitted during that time. "Truth be told, it made me miserable that it was taken in such a manner, since I accept that ladies can do anything. In any case, I additionally accept that they can do everything," Zegler says. What she'd intended to pass on was that Snow White needs sentiment yet has different objectives as well.

"I could never need to enclose somebody and say, 'In the event that you need love, you can't work.' Or on the other hand 'If you need to work, then you can't have a family.' It's false. It's never been valid. It tends to be extremely disturbing when things get taken inappropriately or jokes don't land," Zegler says. "The romantic tale is exceptionally necessary. A many individuals composed that we weren't doing [that storyline] any longer — we were continuously doing that; it simply wasn't what we were referring to on that day."