The ongoing narrative around Rachel Zegler and Disney’s live-action Snow White remake has been exhausting — and it shows zero signs of letting up, too.
After the film was released earlier this month with a disappointing opening weekend box office take, Variety published a widely-derided report claiming that the film’s troubles stemmed from Rachel’s vocal support for the Palestinian people, as well as her opposition to current US President Donald Trump.
One of the revelations in the report is that the film’s producer, Marc Platt, allegedly flew to New York City to demand that Rachel take down a pro-Palestinian post on social media — and that she refused to do so.
The report ended up generating a groundswell of support for Rachel — which led to Marc’s son, podcaster and sometimes-actor Jonah Platt, to post a since-deleted comment on IG defending his father’s actions. “Yeah, my dad, the producer of enormous piece of Disney IP with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, had to leave his family to to fly across the country to reprimand his 20 year old employee for dragging her personal politics into the middle of promoting the movie for which she signed a multi-million dollar contract to get paid and do publicity for,” he wrote. “This is called adult responsibility and accountability. And her actions clearly hurt the film’s box office.”
“Free speech does not mean you’re allowed to say whatever you want in your private employment without repercussions. Tens of thousands of people worked on that film and she hijacked the conversation for her own immature desires at the risk of all the colleagues and crew and blue collar workers who depend on that movie to be successful. Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged.”
Let’s zero in on that last bit of Jonah’s dumb-dumb quote for a second — because this is where Ariana DeBose comes in.
Ariana, as you probably recall, won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar back in 2022 for her performance in West Side Story — which also starred Rachel. Something else of note: Earlier this year, it was revealed that Ariana wouldn’t be starring in a West End production of Evita after contract negotiations allegedly fell apart — and last month, it was reported that Rachel had gotten the role instead.
Well, last night Ariana came forward with an (again, since-deleted) IG post explicitly quoting Jonah’s prior post. “Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged,” the post read.
Seems, uh, pretty coincidental, to say the least! What’s more, people online were not happy, which prompted Ariana to take the post down and issue a new statement via her IG story.
“I post quotes all the time and thought this one was meaningful,” she wrote. “Will fully cop to the fact I did not do any research on where this quote came from, nor did I know of the connection until it was pointed out to me. I have no intention of inserting myself into a news cycle. This is not the first time I’ve posted about dealing with narcissism and it probably won’t be the last, but next time I’ll be sure to clarify its origins first.”