The ‘Snow White’ case or Rachel Zegler vs. Gal Gadot: Hollywood perpetuates female stereotypes of women at each other’s throats

At the end of 1937, Roy and Walt Disney placed their entire bet on one card, just one. After setting up a tiny studio in Silverlake, east of Los Angeles, and realizing that more than just funny cartoons worked, they gambled on going a step further and creating an animated feature film that told a real story. On December 21 of that year, the brothers premiered Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The film’s success was overwhelming, unprecedented. So much so that it gave the Disneys the money to buy the enormous plot of land in Burbank (north of the city) where their imposing studios still stand. Almost a century later, Disney is still standing, and is once again betting on Snow White, from which they expected further success. But, with the movie barely in theaters yet, more than expectation, it has been preceded by controversy the likes of which hadn’t been seen in Hollywood for months.

Snow White — which in its 2025 reimagining ditches the seven dwarfs from its title, no small matter for purists — arrived in a grand way, as only Disney knows how: a film that cost between $210 million and $250 million, plus another few million for promotion, as part of which its star sang at the Alcázar of Segovia in Spain (where Walt drew inspiration for the original). There was also a huge pre-party for its Hollywood premiere, with food inspired by the film, candy aplenty, and apple cocktails. But what happened then?

The main problem is that there is — or has been made to appear to be — a great deal of tension between the two leading actresses. Their points of view are very different, and their chemistry is lacking. That’s undeniable. But various U.S. media outlets, especially sensationalist tabloids, have exploited their differences to continue shamelessly driving the rhetoric of two feuding movie stars, of two women at each other’s throats. This sells magazines, yes, but it also creates a problematic view by maintaining the same outdated narrative of women fighting each other, especially if they are from different social, ethnic, geographic, cultural, and generational backgrounds, as is the case here. A premise that isn’t true and that many have fought against for years, but which is repeated here again and perpetuates that old idea.

The stepmother and Snow White, two opposing characters, two very different people. Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who will turn 40 in April, has almost 40 movies under her belt, some of them box office hits, and a well-established career. She is a 100% Hollywood product who just received her star on the Walk of Fame. She is the wicked witch. Her stepdaughter is Rachel Zegler, 23, with six films to her name (including the modern West Side Story and the latest Hunger Games) and a freshness that doesn’t always fit well in the strict confines of Hollywood.

Zegler is the leading actress and emerging star — also a theater performer, having starred in Romeo and Juliet in New York a few months ago and soon to be Eva Perón in London — whose counterpart Gadot acts as a counterweight. Born in New Jersey, Spielberg cast Zegler at just 17 to play Maria. When she was announced for the remake of West Side Story, she only had a YouTube channel and a few small roles in local plays. The film hadn’t even premiered in December 2021 when it was revealed that she would be the new Snow White.

Disney is trying to revamp its princesses and bring them closer to more children around the world, who don’t always identify with the original versions. While for The Little Mermaid it chose African American actress Halle Bailey as Ariel, here it opted for a young woman of Polish and Colombian descent. This sparked criticism among those who didn’t accept that Zegler’s skin wasn’t as white as snow, as her character’s name suggests.

Although Zegler claimed to be “excited to be a Latina princess” — and her mother’s favorite, as she’s dark-haired, she claimed — her participation has been scrutinized. For example, the industry wasn’t very pleased that she wasn’t invited to the 2022 Oscars after playing Maria. It was even less so that she said so herself, hinting that she wanted to attend the awards (which she did), something that was seen as “a tantrum,” as industry insiders commented. Nor was the fact that when she was offered a role in the sequel to Shazam, she confessed that she was doing it for the money. When speaking about the original 1937 movie, which made Disney the entertainment giant it is, she called it “dated,” featuring a prince that “literally stalks” Snow White. As reported by Variety, on some red carpets she began to say that the story was “weird” and that her future princess would not yearn for a man, which some Disney fans saw as a gesture of “disdain.”

Zegler has been toning down her opinions on the princess — stating that this story would have a more feminist focus, which is logical given that it’s set in 2025 — but without such sharp criticism. Later, her comments took a different tack. First, Donald Trump, to whom she dedicated a long Instagram post (later deleted) ahead of the November elections, where she went so far as to say: “Fuck Donald Trump.” “It’s terrifying how many people stand behind what this man preaches,” she commented a few months before the film’s release, which probably didn’t please Disney, which saw part of its box office sales evaporate with her remark: “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.”

What has finally pitted her against her co-star has been international politics. Beyond manufactured controversies, their divided views are a fact. If their lack of chemistry was already evident at the Oscars, where they presented an award together, it has become clearer, as they have barely posed or done interviews together. Zegler has shown her support for the Palestinian cause. She did so just after presenting the film’s trailer at the Disney D23 convention, offering thanks on X with the phrase: “And always remember, free Palestine.” She has repeated it in interviews, stating that she has been following the conflict “for so many years”: “Like so many people, I’m so heartbroken by the loss of life that we’re seeing,” she told Variety. She also claimed not to have the answers, but as a celebrity, she does have a voice: “If that means that it can fall upon us to be in power in a way that is helpful, then I’m happy to do it.”

This clashes head-on with the principles and opinions of Gadot, who spent two years doing military service in Israel, her home country, and who champions the Israeli cause; so much so that she has recently admitted that she would like to play a role speaking Hebrew. On October 7, 2023, following the Hamas attack and Israel’s response, she wrote on her Instagram profile: “I stand with Israel you should too. The world cannot sit on the fence when these horrific acts of terror are happening.” After receiving her star on the Walk of Fame (where she was booed by a pro-Palestinian group), Gadot stated that after October 7, she doesn’t want to talk about politics, “because who cares about the celebrity talking about politics?” “But on October 7th, when people were abducted from their homes, from their beds, men, women, children, elderly, Holocaust survivors, were going through the horrors of what happened that day, I could not be silent. I was shocked by the amount of hate [...]. So I had to speak up,” she stated, insisting that she doesn’t want to make a speech about hate, but rather about “humanity.”

“I’m not a hater. I’m a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor who came to Israel and established his family from scratch after his entire family was erased in Auschwitz. And on the other side of my family, I’m eighth generation Israeli. I’m an indigenous person of Israel.”

That head-on collision was the final straw for the Disney film, which even decided to de-escalate its premiere: it canceled the presence of journalists on the red carpet, allowing access only to photographers and press from ABC (the company’s television network). This saved the movie’s stars from questions, but also those who aren’t starring in the film: the famous seven dwarfs, another factor of controversy. Back in 2022, Peter Dinklage, the Game of Thrones actor, criticized the new adaptation for potentially perpetuating negative stereotypes. He commented that he thought it was fine that they were looking for a Latina princess, but that they needed to review the story: “Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me. You’re progressive in one way but then you’re still making that fucking backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together, what the fuck are you doing, man? Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soap box?” Afterward, Disney issued a statement: “To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community.”

Disney’s decision was to create the seven co-stars with special effects, and not to have them played by actors with dwarfism. The decision has divided the community because, since the story was maintained, many of the actors feel that they could have cast real people. In fact, a couple of actors with achondroplasia have voiced the characters, but without portraying them on screen. It remains to be seen whether this mixture of new and old ideas will succeed in convincing the global box office, but the success of this Snow White seems incomparable to that of its aging predecessor.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition