It’s fair to say that Disney’s live-action adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has faced intense scrutiny from the get-go. It all started when Rachel Zegler was cast as the titular character, with the 23-year-old actor of Colombian and Polish descent. Disappointingly, the star immediately faced racist backlash from people who argued that the princess should be played by a white actor.
At the time, Rachel responded by sharing a selection of childhood photos of herself dressed up as Disney princesses — including Snow White — and wrote: “I hope every child knows they can be a princess no matter what.” But she continued to be targeted, with the criticism ramping up a gear when Rachel addressed some aspects of the original 1937 animated movie that haven’t aged particularly well. For example, at the D23 Expo in 2022, Rachel said: “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.” “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,” Rachel went on to tell Variety .
“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.” Then, in December of that same year, Rachel admitted that she had only watched Snow White once as a child because it “terrified” her. “I watched it for the first time in probably 16, 17 years when I was doing this film,” Rachel added to Entertainment Weekly at the time.
All of this led to Rachel being unfairly vilified by dedicated Disney fans, with some even accusing her of “ shaming ” people for liking the original movie. In the face of the backlash, many leaped to the star’s defense as it was repeatedly pointed out that several other stars have said much worse about projects they have been in without facing the same harsh response. Harrison Ford and Robert Pattinson were both used as examples, and more recently, fans drew parallels between Rachel’s comments about Snow White and Dakota Johnson’s Madame Webb press tour, as well as Jacob Elordi’s remarks about his early Kissing Booth fame.
But the trolls haven't relented, and even flooded Rachel's old YouTube videos with nasty comments. And by proxy, it seems that some are determined to find fault with her upcoming movie, too, which is now due for release in March 2025. At the D23 Expo earlier this month, Disney shared a sneak peek at the iconic “Whistle While You Work” scene, which ended up leaking online before it was deleted.
And fans weren’t happy with what they saw in the footage, which showed Rachel in character as Snow White as she prepared to get the seven dwarfs’ messy home cleaned up. In the animated movie, Snow White comes across the house with a host of wild animals from the forest. It is empty, and when she sees the small furniture, she believes that children live there.
Upon seeing the mess, Snow White wonders why their mom doesn’t keep the house clean and tidy before exclaiming: “Maybe they have no mother!” “I know, we will clean the house and surprise them, then maybe they’ll let me stay,” she adds. Snow White then enlists the help of all of the animals, delegating chores as she says: “Now you wash the dishes, you tidy up the room, you clean the fireplace, and I’ll use the broom,” before bursting into song. The dwarfs then return from a day of working in the mines, and are confused by — and suspicious of — their clean home and dinner cooking on the stove.
However, in the teased clip from the live-action movie, the animals do not appear to be in the house, and Snow White is instead enlisting the dwarfs as she dishes out the chores. Pointing each dwarf in the right direction, she says: “Now you wash the dishes, you tidy up the room, you clean those cobwebs, and he’ll use the broom.” And this was enough to anger some people, with many reacting to the clip to share their outrage at Snow White getting the dwarfs to help clean their home rather than doing it for them.
One viral tweet , which has been liked more than 18,000 times, reads: “In the original Snow White, she cleans for the dwarves to show her appreciation. In the new one, she breaks into their house and forces them to clean for her. Making a feminist version of a character always means turning her into a nagging ungrateful hag.
” “In the original, Snow White just cleans the house and cooks a meal. In 2024, we can't have that, so she just makes the dwarves clean after they already spent a day in the mines,” a similarly popular tweet adds . Another goes so far as to call the change a “tragedy,” with the disappointed Disney fan writing : “Snow White was led to the house because she needed a place to stay.
But the reason she cleaned the house was because she thought orphaned children lived there, and felt bad they didn't have a mother. So she would clean the house and surprise them. To take this out and have the dwarfs clean their own house, with Snow White not even helping is a tragedy.
It deprives her of the gentleness and caring aspect of her character.” This tweet has been liked 11,000 times, and somebody theorized in the replies: “Maybe it's supposed to be a inversion where snow white is evil and the queen is good,” earning hundreds of likes. “At this point, we are just rooting for the queen,” another user echoed , while one more claimed : “Nothing about her says ‘Snow White’.
Nothing.” Neither Rachel nor Disney have acknowledged this latest wave of backlash, and something tells me that we better brace ourselves for the online discourse when Snow White finally gets released. More on this Rachel Zegler’s Comments About “Snow White” Are Being Compared To Robert Pattinson’s Infamous Hatred For “Twilight” And The Double Standards Are Alarming Stephanie Soteriou · Aug.
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