Ever since her debut in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s “West Side Story,” New Jersey-native Rachel Zegler has quickly become one of Hollywood’s go-to young starlets. Despite this rapid ascension and her appreciation for the success she’s found in the entertainment business, in a recent interview with Variety , she admitted that the city where much of the actual business is conducted isn’t exactly her favorite place to be. “The reason I fell in love with this industry is not because of this town,” Zegler said of Hollywood.
“In fact, I kind of can’t stand this town. I don’t like that there’s a town built around the industry that I work in; it’s stifling and isolating and weird. In New York, nobody gives a fuck.
” Zegler is currently back on the east coast for a while, starring in a new Broadway production of “Romeo and Juliet” with “Heartstopper” star Kit Connor. This comes after a six-month shoot in the U.K.
for Disney’s live-action reinterpretation of “Snow White,” which was preceded by a long shoot in Poland for “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.” “It’s not until you have to go around the world filming in different cities that you realize how grateful you are for the diversity [of New York],” said Zegler of coming back to the city after being away so long. “When I came home from my year in Europe, going to my bodega, where people speak in Spanish to me, I was.