Rachel Zegler Is Innocent: Why The Internet Is So Incredibly Wrong About One Of Our Most Promising Actors

Can we have one day when people act normally toward Rachel Zegler? Just one? No? Okay. I guess we're doing this.

In the wake of Disney's live-action "Snow White" remake debuting with a less-than-ideal performance at the box office, the Loud and Wrong Online Society have returned with pitchforks and poisoned apples to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of a promising young actress who is, as of publication, too young to legally rent a car on her own. Yes, the failure of "Snow White" is apparently not the result of decisions made by the leadership committees and creative teams of a multi-billion dollar entertainment machine, but due to the individual actions and public perception of an actress who is so young that when she was plucked from obscurity after replying to casting call posts on Twitter for Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story" (her debut feature released less than five years ago), she was still in high school.

People have been expressing their disdain for Zegler for years — the latest tribute reaped into the same games of unfounded distaste that Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway are still trying to claw their way out of — but things escalated dramatically when the actress of Colombian descent was cast as "Snow White." I'm not going to call the discourse surrounding her casting in "Snow White" a "controversy" and am instead going to call it by its name — racism and misogyny. Save me the diatribes about how she "trashed" the original animated picture by acknowledging a film made in 1937 has some dated ideas about love (I've already said my piece on that) because it's a distraction tactic from what's really happening here.

Rachel Zegler is being set up to take the fall for a multimillion-dollar loss, and the people setting her up for it are banking on racist, misogynistic hatred on the internet to do the dirty work for them.

When Lily James was cast as the titular "Cinderella," she hailed the updates made to the story and said during one interview, "This is a girl that's not sitting around waiting for a prince to come and save her. She's got this unbelievable strength, and it doesn't come from fighting or from what happens; it comes from within." Similarly, when Emma Watson was on the press tour for "Beauty and the Beast," she discussed her new take on Belle by saying, "I love that, in our version, Belle is not only awed and doesn't fit in, you see her reading and she's actually an activist within her own community." And yet it was Rachel Zegler (like Halle Bailey in "The Little Mermaid" before her) who was thrown to the bigoted wolves for daring to say a movie made when The Hays Code was still in effect is outdated.

"There was a lot of harassment from a certain group of people — they were showing up at my apartment and screaming profanities," Zegler told Cosmopolitan in 2023. As a star on the rise still in her early 20s, Zegler does not have the safety or security of a mansion residence tucked away in a place like the Hollywood Hills. She's a working actor who takes public transit to work, so the fact that people found her residency is far more horrific than appearing on a Map to the Stars tour. Disney disclosed to Variety that they hired additional security for Zegler's "Snow White" co-star Gal Gadot due to the death threats she received as a former Miss Israel pageant winner and soldier with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but there has been no word on whether or not they extended the security to Zegler for the targeted harassment she received.

The hard truth is that the general public (and panicky studio heads) greatly overestimate the power of online discourse. For every story like "Sonic the Hedgehog gets a redesign due to fan backlash," there are a dozen online-exclusive dissensions that barely make a blip. If social media engagement numbers truly had the power many people (including those same panicky studio heads) like to believe they do, there would be a direct correlation between influencers being cast in movies and box office returns (spoiler alert: there isn't). The general public not only doesn't care about whatever nonsense is being spread online about Rachel Zegler, but they have no idea it's even happening. It's the same reason people are discovering every day that J.K. Rowling is one of society's most vocal anti-trans celebrities because unless you're actively online, these conversations are very easy to miss.

In actuality, "Snow White" wasn't a smash-hit because the trailer looked nightmarish, the reviews weren't all that great, most kids were more hyped for "Moana 2" than for a Disney Princess story that's nearly 90 years old, the bloated budget set the film up for failure by requiring a massive performance to break even, and the industry has foolishly trained families to wait a few months for a film to hit Disney+ instead of spending nearly $100 for a family of four to head out to the theater. Placing the blame on Zegler is nothing more than skirting accountability and allowing a billion-dollar corporation to cosplay as Principal Skinner on "The Simpsons" when he said, "Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong."

In the days before and after the opening weekend of "Snow White," Variety published multiple articles about the "controversy" surrounding Rachel Zegler, with the most egregious published on March 25. The article and the feedback loop from those who agreed with the assessment that followed was a blatant stab to paint Zegler's social media statements supporting Palestine and being anti-Trump as the huntsman's blade in the heart of the film's possible success, not unlike the way director Nia DaCosta was positioned as the sole responsible party for the poor box office performance of "The Marvels."

It's embarrassing, honestly, to witness this very clear attempt to control the narrative surrounding a film's critical and financial journey by capitalizing on the loudest, cruelest people online, all of whom are practically frothing at the mouth for the chance to unleash baseless, disgusting character assassinations on the person who is the only reason the film works at all. The dogwhistles are starting to sound like air raid sirens, and the hilarious irony is that the undeserved ire has only made her defenders more passionate. If Rachel Zegler has no defenders, it means I'm dead.

The average Rachel Zegler fan (stan culture excluded, obviously) is a regular person who has better things to do with their precious time on this earth than be bothered with the social media posts of an actor cast in a movie where she's tasked to sing a song about doing housework. But because her haters are incapable of being Normal, if the support for Zegler were champagne, there really would be enough to fill the Nile.

I'm begging some of you to get actual problems, and am eagerly waiting on a wish that Zegler gets to work with people who value her worth.