Forget Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, we've got Snow White and the culture wars. After Rachel Zegler blasted president-elect Donald Trump on social media—then apologized—right wing pundit Megyn Kelly has demanded that Disney replace the ingenue as the star of Disney's forthcoming live-action remake of Snow White.
In the wake of the election, Zegler, who's currently starring as Juliet in Sam Gold's revival of Romeo and Juliet on Broadway, expressed her disappointment that Trump was returning to office. “It is terrifying the number of people who stand behind what this man preaches,” Zegler said in her Instagram stories. “It is a foolish subscription to a false sense of security, of masculinity, of intelligence, of patriotism, and of humanity. there is no help, no counsel, in any of them. I could go on. I won’t. I feel sad. You probably do, too. Fuck this.”
The 23-year-old's lamentations about the state of the nation caught the attention of former Fox and NBC news host Megyn Kelly, who called out Zegler on her podcast, Ruthless. “There’s something wrong with this person,” said Kelly on the podcast. “Hello, Disney, you’re going to have to redo your film again, because this woman is a pig, and you fired Gina Carano for far less than this nonsense.” Carano was fired from Disney's Star Wars series The Mandalorian after comparing criticism of political conservatives to the Holocaust on social media. Carano is now suing Disney in an Elon Musk-financed lawsuit for sex discrimination and wrongful termination.
“You’re going to put out a Disney film with Snow White, a beloved American character, with a woman who hates more than half the country, the half that just elected Donald Trump?” Kelly continued. “This is an incredible pivot point right now.”
Zegler eventually issued an apology on Instagram for what she said about Trump. “I would like to sincerely apologize for the election post I shared on my Instagram last week,” she wrote in a since deleted story. “I let my emotions get the best of me. Hatred and anger have caused us to move further and further away from peace and understanding, and I am sorry I contributed to the negative discourse.”
Snow White has already been the target of conservative ire for being “politically correct,” in part for casting Zegler, a Latina woman, in the lead role. “People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it’s like, yeah, it is—because it needed that," Zegler told Vanity Fair last year. "It’s an 85-year-old cartoon, and our version is a refreshing story about a young woman who has a function beyond ‘Someday My Prince Will Come.’”
It's unclear whether Kelly heard Zegler's apology before recording her Ruthless podcast—both the apology and the podcast were released on the same day. Nevertheless, the former NBC news anchor was clear regarding her stance on the star. “I’m sorry, Disney, she has to go right now,” said Kelly. “We’ll see which way the woke Disney decides to go.” Of course, Snow White has already wrapped production, and Disney is unlikely to spend millions of dollars reshooting an entire movie ahead of the film’s already delayed release date on March 21, 2025—but Kelly can keep dreaming. Perhaps Zegler has found the real-life evil queen to her Snow White.
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