‘I’ve mostly seen the bad of it’: Rachel Zegler speaks out on racism in the entertainment industry
Entitled, racist fans continue to be a horrible problem for actors of color to deal with. Rachel Zegler, unfortunately, knows that all too well. When she was cast as the Disney princess Snow White in a live-action remake, she was subjected to vicious abuse from the worst people on the Internet. Her comments about the changes the new movie would make brought a wave of hatred down on her from people who aren’t even the target audience for Disney princess movies.
There were even death threats made against her. A since removed Twitter/X user wrote “Someone should kill you” to Zegler back in August, and she responded wittily, plugging her upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet while also tagging the FBI.
Now that production of Romeo and Juliet has come to Broadway, and Zegler and her Romeo Kit Connor have promoted it by giving an in-depth interview to Teen Vogue. They talk about the Shakespeare play, of course, but they also talk about the difficulties both of them faced by being, respectively, a Latina woman and a bisexual man in the public eye. (Connor was infamously forced to out himself after fans of Heartstopper accused him of “queerbaiting”)
In a conversation about fans and boundaries—Teen Vogue brought up Chappell Roan, who has adjusted her relationship with fans to protect her mental health—Zegler spoke about the issues that come with social media.
“I feel like you become stripped of your humanity a bit because you are seen as a product or an object of people’s affection, hatred, obsession,” she said. Both she and Connor agreed social media came with both good sides and bad sides, but Zegler explained, “I’ve mostly seen the bad of it. I’ve been doxxed. I’ve had people outside my apartment, I’ve had people protesting my existence and the color of my skin. I don’t f*ck with it anymore. I really don’t.”
Which is, of course, a perfectly valid way for Zegler to feel. Her Twitter/X account is still there, but it’s barely been touched since the death threat incident in August. Zegler’s last statement on there was “and always remember, free palestine”—a good note to go out on.
“I’m off Twitter. F**k Twitter,” Zegler said. “It can be a nasty place. I saw what it did to [Kit]. I know what it did to me. I’ve seen women in particular be torn down my entire life. Jameela Jamil, why? Taylor Swift, why? Jennifer Lawrence, why? Anne Hathaway, why? Halle Bailey, why? And I know why, but the general public will never learn… now they’ve moved on to Chappell. F**k them.”
Teen Vogue brought up another sobering subject to Zegler —the abuse that a different Juliet actress, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, suffered when she was cast alongside Tom Holland in a West End production of the play. She suffered such bad racist attacks that a group of Black female and non-binary creatives released an open letter calling for actors to be better protected against racism.
Zegler revealed she’d reached out to Amewudah-Rivers. “My friend Dujonna Gift from Snow White is very good friends with her and I just shot her a DM saying, ‘Hey, I think you’re the greatest.’ She responded and vocalized her thanks for people who stood up for her in the time where everybody was tearing her down.”
But the point Zegler wanted to make was, “I think she was failed by the people around her. You need to protect people when you make a vow to cast them in something where you know— you can’t act stupid, you know how the general public is going to act because they’ve been acting that way for years.”
She went on, “You need to move quickly and make sure that she is protected. I’ve never seen such heinous things said about a person before than [I did about] her. It took absolutely nothing out of me to shoot out a tweet saying that she was my Juliet.” It’s truly disgusting how racism still runs rampant on social media. The Elon Musk-owned X platform doesn’t deserve Zegler, and the entertainment industry still has a lot of ground to cover when it comes to dealing with attacks from racists.
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
