Image Source: Digital Spy, Sportskeeda
West Side Story fame actress Rachel Zegler was finalized for the role of Snow White for Disney’s live-action remake but the audience is not happy with her casting.
20-year-old Rachel Zegler who with her exceptionally fine acting in Steven Speilberg’s ‘West Side Story’, managed to win the Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture-musical or comedy and was highly appreciated by the audience, and critics has been receiving backlash for her casting as Snow White. The audience is upset with her casting because of her Latin descent.
Rachel Zegler shared with Andrew Garfield during Variety’s ‘Actors on Actors series, “Never in a million years did I imagine that this would be a possibility for me. You don’t normally see Snow Whites that are of Latin descent. Even though Snow White is really a big deal in Spanish-speaking countries. Blanca Nieves is a huge icon whether you’re talking about the Disney cartoon or just different iterations and the Grimm fairy tale and all the stories that come with it. But you don’t particularly see people who look like me or are me playing roles like that. When it was announced, it was a huge thing that was trending on Twitter for days, because all of the people were angry.”
To which Andrew Garfield replied, “Ah, those people. The people that we need to educate. The people that we need to love into awareness.” Rachel added to Andrew’s comment, “We need to love them in the right direction. 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.” Rachel shared last year during an interview with BuzzFeed, "There's not much I can say about it besides the fact that Snow White has constantly been criticized. Even though she's the original Disney princess and we love her so much, [she's been] criticized for existing solely for a prince, existing solely to be rescued. I think that our director, Marc Webb, and everyone who's working on this film has really taken her narrative and turned it into something that's a lot stronger. I'm very, very excited to be able to bring that to life."
According to reports, Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot will be taking over the role as Evil Queen, Andrew Burnap will play opposite Rachel Zegler and Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb is going to direct the movie. Marc Webb said in a statement when Rachel was announced as the lead in June, "Rachel's extraordinary vocal abilities are just the beginning of her gifts. Her strength, intelligence and optimism will become an integral part of rediscovering the joy in this classic Disney fairytale.”
Peter Dinklage is unhappy with Disney's decision to remake Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Image Source: The Big Issue
Peter Dinklage has called out Disney for their decision to remake the story in one of his podcast interviews and said, "There's a lot of hypocrisy going on. Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback when they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White. But you're still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Take a step back and look at what you're doing there. It makes no sense to me." Peter continued with his statement, “You're progressive in one way, but then you're still making that fucking backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together — what the fuck are you doing, man? All love and respect to the actress and to the people who thought they were doing the right thing. But I'm just like, What are you doing?"
Disney released a statement in response to Peter’s comment and the statement read, "To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community. We look forward to sharing more as the film heads into production after a lengthy development period." There has not been much revealed about the remake live-action movie yet.
