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Sami Drasin/Courtesy of Disney
Similar to what happened when Halle Bailey was cast as Ariel in The Little Mermaid—a Black actress playing a cartoon white redhead— there were some loud Internet types who didn’t approve of Rachel Zegler, who is of Colombian descent on her mom’s side, playing Snow White in Disney’s live-action remake.
As in, the fictional character who only has any color because the Brothers Grimm gave her skin “as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony” in their 19th-century fairy tale.
“Yes I am snow white no I am not bleaching my skin for the role,” she wrote in a since-deleted post on social media, per the Wall Street Journal. Zegler also called the armchair critics “losers obsessed with maintaining the bloodline purity of a cartoon princess.”
In a conversation with Andrew Garfield for Variety in 2022, Zegler acknowledged the “angry” people who made her a trending topic.
“We need to love them in the right direction,” she concluded. “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.”
The Westside Story alum did thumb her nose at the trolls again, tweeting in 2023, “extremely appreciative of the love i feel from those defending me online, but please don’t tag me in the nonsensical discourse about my casting.”
