Snow White. What Happened? | Episode 18

So people have a lot of questions. What really happened with Snow White? And is there somebody that we can blame? Now, I have obviously had a lot of time to think about this.
I think we all have. And I finally have an answer for you.
So after a long wait, Disney's new Snow White finally came out last week. And to put it mildly, my friends, this has been a colossal mess.
I mean, it's been a colossal mess since the very beginning, basically, but this release, this premiere has been absolutely horrifying. Like I literally found myself feeling bad for them at times, which is that just shows you how terrible this has been.
It is financially crumbling, financially failing. The reviews are genuinely, genuinely horrible.
and new controversies surrounding the production, surrounding the actresses in the film are literally popping up every single day. They cannot outrun the curse that is on this film.
And so of course we have to ask, like with all of these things going on over the last three years, is there one reason why this actually flopped? You know, was it because of politics and wokeness? Was this another woke flop or was it simply just a terrible film that nobody wanted from the beginning? Don't worry, we are going to get into all of that today, plus some of the things that you might have missed during this whole scandal. And yes, there will be a long-awaited update.
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Okay, so I know that we all want to talk about this Snow White, but I know that there is also another Snow White that I think you guys want me to talk about. Just basing that off of the DMs, the comments, the emails that I receive on a daily basis, and I am sorry that that has not been addressed sooner, but I just want to say, from me, you know, before we get into this episode, I think I need to address the elephant in the room, but unfortunately, the only thing I can really say is that that is not my story to tell.
Those are not my updates to give. And in the film industry, when you are an actor, when you sign one of these contracts in the entertainment industry, I think a lot of people on the outside think that, you know, if you are somebody who, you know, has a lot of publicity around you and your name's attached to a project, that means that you have a ton of control or a ton of intel, but usually that is not the case.
Unless you are, you know, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively with all of their films apparently, or Margot Robbie in Barbie and you are also an executive producer, as an actor, you don't get to dictate anything. You don't get to dictate if a film actually happens.
You don't get to dictate when it is shot, how it is shot, if you can ever speak about it to the public. You are simply just there to show up and say your lines and look the way they want you to look.
That is our job and that was my job on this production. So again, that's really all I can say.
Which honestly, kind of seems like maybe this path that I'm taking right now is the path that Rachel Zegler should have taken instead of just running her mouth for the last three years, which we are going to get into now that I have sort of addressed what you guys want me to address. Now, I am guessing that most of us have followed this entire Snow White controversy, but also this has been going on since 2022, since September of 2022, that is when this all first exploded.
So it's been a while. Like, as I was putting together this episode and trying to, you know, cover all the things that have happened recently, I was like, oh my god, I've kind of, like, forgotten everything that took place.
So I think we need to do a brief recap. So just to sum everything up, Rachel Zegler, her comments first exploded on the scene about Snow White back at the Disney D23 Expo in September of 2022.
And this is where the clips went viral of her saying, Snow White doesn't need a man, she's not going to fall for the prince. You know, this is about her own journey, her internal journey.
Maybe she'll even run for president. If you guys have forgotten those clips, this is what I'm referring to.
No longer 1937. She's not going to be saved by the prince.
She's gonna be saved by the prince and she's not gonna be dreaming about true love. She's dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.
God forbid, God forbid a woman dream about true love. We're all just sitting around here.
Oh, I'm, maybe I could be president one day. I hate men, I just wanna be president.
That screams Disney princess. Oh my God, I'm literally getting enraged once again.
I feel like I'm back in 2022. All right, anyway, we'll continue.
The original cartoon came out in 1937, and very evidently so. There's a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her.
Yeah, the entire film's about a love story. Yeah, I mean, it's about a love story because that's what the point of the film is, and'm sorry that chivalry in a man pursuing you is now deemed as stalking, which now it's kind of making sense why men are opting out of the dating scene.
Because this is what they are hearing from women on social media. Weird.
Weird. So we didn't do that this time.
I was scared of the original cartoon. I think I watched it once and then I never picked it up again.
I watched it for the first time in probably 16, 17 years. Like guys, there is just so much to unpack here.
Like she is crapping on the original production. I was, I was scared of it.
Oh, it was so weird. It was a stalker.
Like, I feel like if you are taking on the most iconic Disney role ever, genuinely, like this was the most prolific Disney film, I feel like you should kind of have some sort of reverence for the original production, for what it meant. That maybe there were timeless values and virtues in that film that still translate today, that many people in the world still subscribe to and long for.
Like, I don't know, that might be crazy, but it seemed like this was a bad PR move from the get-go. So again, that happened in September of 2022.
In addition to that, there was already an uproar about her being cast as Snow White, because she is not Caucasian. She is a Latina.
She is half Colombian. And so people were like, why were you cast in the first place? We just had a Black Little Mermaid.
Now we're having a Latina Snow White, and is literally called Snow White. This doesn't make sense.
So that was happening. And then this was just the icing on the cake.
And obviously there are political undertones in her statement. She's kind of talking about feminism and masculinity and men, but people seemed most disappointed about the fact that, again, Rachel didn't even seem like she cared or liked the source material.
I mean, that is just far from a graceful Disney princess-like promotion. It's far from what you would think Disney wanted.
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And then come back and thank me later. Now, I brought my friend Link Loren onto the show today to talk about all of this because what originally made Link go viral on TikTok was the first video he ever made about Snow White.
It was the first video I ever saw with him in it. It's the first one that I included in my show, so I wanted to bring him back on.
And yes, he is still just as passionate about this story. We don't want to hear from Rachel Zegler about feminism or her life or what she wants to do with her body.
You played Snow White, be an actress, be young, be an ingenue in Hollywood. I don't understand what she's doing.
The fastest way to tank your career, go out there and start running your mouth and trashing the original IP of the film you're in. Also, there's nothing wrong with wanting a man.
Can we not have chivalry in this world anymore? There's nothing wrong with saying, you know what? I'd love for a man to come scoop me up and provide for me. TLDR, the girls and the gays, we all want a man.
We all dream about true love, so Disney, that is not outdated. Now from there, it just seemed like controversy after controversy kept erupting.
The next one was within the little people community, and I kind of feel weird saying the little people community, but I know that that is how they prefer to be referenced as. Also, they go by LP, but obviously they had some skin in the game because this is Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
These are roles that they could have played and were excited about playing, but not everybody was on the same page. Now, Peter Dinklage, who was one of the most famous little people probably in the entire world, especially after his long tenure on Game of Thrones, he came out and he said, I don't even want Snow White to be told ever again at all because of the ramifications for the little people community.
In a 2022 interview, he said, literally no offense to anything, but I was sort of taken aback about the fact that they are redoing this film. They were very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White, but you're still telling the story of Snow White and the seven dwarves.
Take a step back and look at what you're doing here. It makes no sense to me.
You're progressive in one way, but you're still making that fucking backward story about seven dwarves living in a cave together. Have I done nothing to advance the cause for my soapbox? I guess I'm not loud enough." So the important thing to know about Peter Dinklage here is that he is very opposed to little people playing roles that are written for little people.
He just wants them to be hired to play a role regardless of height or size, so he is opposed to the Seven Dwarves and the caricatures and the stereotypes that go along with the Seven Dwarves. And obviously he is probably the most famous little person in existence, so Disney, oh boy! Like the day that this interview came out, Disney said, okay, okay, we are, we're listening, we are learning, Peter Dinklage.
And they had decided that they were not going to call them the Seven Dwarves because that might be offensive. Instead, they were going to do Snow White and the Seven Magical Creatures that would not be played by little people to not offend Peter Dinklage, but instead would be created by CGI.
However, that also did not go over well because the LP community apparently does not agree with Peter Dinklage, and they actually were very excited about the opportunity of playing one of the Seven dwarfs. They were angry at Disney and it all just exploded.
However, Disney, they stuck with the course. They kept moving forward with the seven magical creatures and the CGI.
And ironically, by creating these CGI, silly, cartoonish, dwarf-like characters, they actually fed into the exact stereotypes that Dinklage was criticizing as backwards and harmful. He was saying, don't do this story because you put us in a box, and by not actually hiring LP actors, they just fed into that and made them look silly and ridiculous.
And even the mainstream media caught onto this irony, which is when you know that it's really bad. New York Magazine, their vertical vulture, wrote, the horrifying dwarves in Snow White are a cautionary tale.
And they basically argued the exact same thing that I just laid out for you guys. So basically, no one was happy.
Like Disney could not make a right move when it came to producing this film. Weird.
Weird. Now amidst all of that, and you know that was going on from the end of 2022 into the summer of 2023, amidst all of that, the son of one of the original 1937 Snow White creators and directors decided to speak out.
And he had some choice words for Disney and this production, telling the Telegraph that his father and Walt Disney would be rolling in their graves because of what Disney was doing. And in covering this, they wrote, as details surrounding the 2024 Snow White remake emerge, Hale Hand told the Telegraph that he stands in strong opposition to the new movie.
Quote, I mean, it is a whole different concept, which is true. They completely changed the story.
Weird. Weird.
And I just totally disagree with it. And I know my dad and Walt would also very much disagree with it, the 91-year-old said.
There is no respect for what Disney did and what my dad did. I think Walt and he would be turning in their graves, he said.
Hail Hand said that he would prefer if Disney's original animated films remained untouched, as we all would, calling the remake a, quote, disgrace for trying to do something new with something that was such a great success earlier. Quote, I'm afraid of what they're going to do with the earlier films.
The company's thoughts are just so radical now. They change the stories, they change the thought processes of the characters, they just aren't the original stories anymore.
They're making up new woke things and I'm just not into any of that. And I love that this is a 91-year-old saying that this 91-year-old should be at his retirement home relaxing, playing bingo, not thinking about his father who is a certified Disney legend, not thinking about his father's legacy and the woke things that Disney is doing.
I mean, I completely agree. I think most of us agreed with what he was saying.
And I mean, how was any of this ever controversial? Like, this is common sense. And unfortunately for Disney, it seemed like most people who were observing this scandal, this controversy, agreed.
So after all of that, after almost a year of all of this exploding, Disney announced in October of 2023 that they were going to delay the release of Snow White. So they were not going to release it in March of 2024.
They were going to wait until this year, March of 2025, to release it, probably to let the controversy just settle down a bit. And then later, like a couple months later, we learned that they were investing even more money to go back and reshoot parts of the film.
But you know what? I don't know if that actually helped because as Link says, that is never a good sign, nor is it ever a good solution. This is never a good sign when they're going back and doing major, major reshoots.
Something went awry from the beginning because they weren't going to do Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Remember at one point in 2023, it was going to be Snow White and the Seven Magical Creatures.
And then we saw pictures from the set and it looked like Snow White and the seven hipsters from Brooklyn. So no, the movie was pretty much destined to be a flop and an utter calamity from the beginning.
Now I know that that was a lot, but also I feel like we needed to recap all of that. And I tried to make it as condensed as humanly possible.
So all of that happened, you know, we're moving on now we're in 2024. And for about a year, it seemed like maybe things could have taken a turn for the better.

Like, I was actually walking around going, you know, this is pretty great.

Like, we, with all of our power, with our audience ammunition, we got them to stall this.

We got them to go back and reshoot things.

They are listening to us.

They are actually listening and learning in the good way.

Maybe this is huge.

This is a win for audiences.

But then there was a downturn. Because again, as I keep thinking to myself, I think that this film was just cursed after all.
And what they should have done was just taken a lesson from the original film and fallen into a deep, deep sleep, hopefully on their Helix mattress. Now you guys know I take my sleep seriously.
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Again, that is helixsleep.com slash Brett for 25% off. So because they did not go into a deep long sleep and put all of this to rest, things just kept transpiring and that now leads us to 2025.
We are almost caught up. Now to really put this into perspective, Disney spent over 250 million producing this film and that's just on production.
That's not on later promotional costs and flying Rachel and Gal Gadot everywhere and the billboards and everything and all the advertisements, all the trailers, that is just producing the product itself. And in comparison, Cinderella, the live action with Lily James, that film only cost 90 million to make.
So this is a ginormous budget and they are, for some reason, not really promoting it. Like we're seeing trailers and advertisements, but there's no big premieres or events.
Like for example for example with these types of films Disney usually hosts a myriad of different events with Q&As and the press is involved and at all of the events that they did host the press was not allowed to ask questions. And then when it came time for the actual premiere instead of holding it in Los Angeles or London they decided to do something which actually kind of sounds cool and they went to the Spanish castle that actually inspired the Snow White castle from the beginning, and they held the premiere there.
But that was their primary premiere. It's in a remote location, barely anyone was invited, press was not there, it was just a bunch of people listening to Rachel Zegler sing, and that was basically it.
In LA, they had a tiny premiere, but they didn't even have a red carpet for Rachel Zegler to walk, and normal media outlets were not invited. They only invited a select few reporters and photographers who were allowed to come to the event.
So they are obviously under the assumption that this film is cursed probably, that people don't wanna see it. They are trying to keep the lid on things.
They don't want Rachel to talk. Maybe they don't want Gal Gadot to talk.
They're just trying to keep this contained, which is crazy because they spent over $250 million. Like I feel like we are back in the Biden presidency where there were no press conferences and the press was not allowed to speak to him and he only gave approved quotes to some reporters.
Like, that is what this promotion feels like. Weird.
Weird. Now, in addition to that, people also noticed that at the few events that they did hold, Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot were rarely together.
And if they were there, they weren't really communicating, they were taking a picture, and then they were just going their separate ways. People were going, you know, what could have happened on this set to make this so uncomfortable? And then the light bulb moment happened.
It is their starkly contrasting views on the Israel-Palestine conflict that they have been extremely vocal about for the last year and a half. Now, Gal Gadot is obviously, she is from Israel, she is staunchly pro-Israel, and Rachel is incredibly pro-Palestine.
It's Hollywood, baby. And so obviously in 2025, this is a recipe for disaster, and obviously the cloud of geopolitical conflicts is not what you want overshadowing the premiere of a Disney princess movie, but we will get into that a little bit later.
What you really need to know, and the scene that I was trying to set there, is that Disney kind of knew that this was not going well. They were, you know, bracing themselves for this not to work, and listen, they were correct because it flopped.
The film cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, even more to promote, and it only brought in 43 million dollars domestically in its first weekend. And as a comparison, The Little Mermaid, which also had its fair share of woke controversies leading up to it, it opened to $95 million domestically.
And as another example, in 2019, the live-action Aladdin brought in $91 million. And so while this was not the worst premiere Disney has ever had, like many people on X are saying, it certainly wasn't good, especially with how much time and money went into making it and then subsequently trying to desperately fix it.
But what was even more comical, in my opinion, and what was even more damning than the financial implications was the reviews that are absolutely taking over the internet, and these are from audiences and critics alike. I mean, guys, no amount of Disney PR or box office wins can save them from this massacre.
I mean, just look, currently on Rotten Tomatoes, Snow White, the 2025 production, has a 42% tomato meter, which is certified rotten with a 74% audience score. But we're gonna talk about why that is a bit skewed.
Anyway, here's the screenshot, 42%, 74%. And you might think, you might look at that 74% and go, okay, well, Brett, that's not that bad.
But then you click onto that little number and there is a different story that is told. That 74% is only from verified Rotten Tomato audience members.
The full score and the score from top critics is even worse. Take a look at this.
From top critics, 29%. From all audience members, 19%.
It goes from 74% to 19%. It is literally everyone, including the top critics.
I mean, just listen to these reviews. These are all from critics.
This lady says, it is too cheesy, too over the top, and too visually flat while brimming over with hyperactive theater kid energy that is better suited for a Disney princess cruise ship show. This man, William, says, there is nothing wrong with Disney's live action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
It couldn't be fixed by making it 26 minutes shorter, 88 years ago, and in hand-drawn animation. Another man says, a Disney film production with a Disney Channel script.
Another guy says, in short, hi-ho, don't go. But guys, it gets even worse than the individual critic reviews because even the legacy media, I mean, these are the people who should be salivating.
They should be waiting with bated breath to defend this production and defend Rachel Zegler. They struggled to do so.
This one is from The Observer at The Guardian, and they wrote, Snow White Review, toe-curlingly terrible live-action remake. Huffington Post, again, this is a publication that should be just, like, banging down the door waiting to give them a positive review.
They said, Snow White a strange hot mess. This one is from Vanity Fair.
Disney's Snow White movie is good enough for TV because that's where it's playing, right? Right? BBC said Disney's Snow White has a major identity crisis. I mean guys, every single one of these reviews is just absolutely brutal.
And what you also need to know is that these are not politically driven reviews. I mean, most of them are from the camp that should be supporting Disney, that should be behind this new progressive take on Snow White, and yet they can't because the film is apparently just that bad.
I mean, from the CGI dwarves to the strange storyline that seems more about a political uprising than a princess falling in love with a prince, to Gal Gadot's less than appealing acting,, yes, like that reviewer said, seems like it is better suited for a Disney Channel show. Just take a watch.
Are you against me too? Are you? Are you? I mean, literally, if I'm watching like Disney Channel, I'm watching Jessie and like the elevator doors open. What have you done? Slime.
Like that is what this caliber of acting feels suited for. But again, you know, I'm trying to find the bright spots here.
I want to bring nuance, I want to give you both sides, and to be fair, some publications did try to find the good. For example, you know, Hollywood Reporter, they were complimenting Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler's intensity and Rachel's voice, which by the way, I love.
I actually think that she has a fantastic voice. I loved her in West Side Story, so I was, you know, it was unfortunate to see all of this transpire.
Like, I genuinely do think that Rachel Zegler has talent, but you do have to wonder if she was the right kind of talented for this role. And maybe it was a combination of that plus the music that they wrote and the storyline.
Maybe it was just the entire whole damn thing. And I asked Link his thoughts about that specifically.
Should have just made an upbeat, fun, colorful movie. I think Rachel Zegler was miscast.
I'm not trying to be shady, but when you see the pictures of her as Snow White, you're like, that's Snow White? Like she doesn't look happy. She's not really smiling.
She has this kind of sourpuss attitude to her at all times. Rachel Zegler is like an obnoxious little Gen Z brat.
And so of course the movie was destined to fail, go woke, go broke. And Link is completely spot on.
Like I think all of us envisioned Snow White like the original, like the real Snow White, not some Gen Z girl boss doing power ballads and belting songs about relieving her people from oppression. Like that's not even what the story is about.
But again, she is talented. She has a good voice But even the people who try to point that out and print that in their magazines had to acknowledge that on a whole The film just wasn't good and they couldn't get through a review without saying that.
Weird. Weird.
So now the question is, you know, what we have to figure out is, you know, was it the politics? Was it the controversies that overtook this film for the last three years or or was it the terrible filmmaking? And no one seems to have a clear answer. You know, if you go on X, you'll see conservatives and they are hell bent at pointing the finger at Rachel Ziegler saying, you did this, you were the wrong choice, you tanked this film, you should take responsibility.
It's all your comments about Trump and feminism and disdain for the prince and disdain for Trump supporters, everything that she was posting on social media for the last year. And then of course, people on the left also think that it's flopping for political reasons, but not for the reasons conservatives think.
They think that it's flopping because people are retaliating against Rachel Ziegler talking about Palestine. And then of course, you have the normal Americans who are not on blue sky or on X, the normal people around the world who showed up regardless of all of this, regardless of all the controversies, and who could not have been more bored or disappointed.
And I think that that, that demographic speaks volumes. Edmund Smirk on X, he tweeted sort of about this and he said, you know, I assume that the new Snow White was good simply because the right-wing chuds hate it.
They usually hate all the solid, good quality stuff, but it seems like even liberal journalists who studied film in college hate it. Therefore, I know it is bad.
The experts are usually right on this stuff. I wouldn't say that those film critics are usually right, but the fact that they aren't bending over backwards to defend this film, that is saying something.
Because in this society that has become very normal to all of us, in this weird upside down world, that is what we have come to expect. And in addition to all of that, I also think that there are a lot of people in the world who do not spend their days thinking about politics or the culture war or feminism and what that means in a Disney princess movie.
I think that they're probably just tired of the BS. They're tired of the remakes and audiences have been trying to tell companies like Disney this.
And also they hate the fact that they get attacked on a daily basis by companies like Disney, as Link pointed out. If you piss off half the country, let's say 77 million Americans voted for President Trump.
If you're not reaching out to them, if you're basically crapping on them every single day, they're not going to turn out to the box office. I think sometimes these woke liberals in Hollywood, they live in their little bubble and their vacuums, and they don't realize half the country that they like to fly over between Los Angeles and New York, they have money in their pockets.
They are going to choose to go see movies that resonate with them, that speak to them. They're not going to go see movies where the main actress has spent two and a half years basically eviscerating their lifestyles and what they stand for and family values.
So yes, no wonder that demographic did not show up. I don't know if you guys saw all of these posts on social media.
There are now articles written about them, but people were taking screenshots of the seating charts at their local theaters. And it was like the opening weekend for Snow White, the seven o'clock showing, the 4 p.m.
showing on a Saturday when families would be taking their kids. And literally it was like one seat had sold, maybe two seats over on one side and theaters across the country.
Like people were simply not showing up. And I mean, at this point, like, who is surprised? Now, as I've been sitting back for the last couple of weeks, watching the premieres happen, watching all the reviews come out, I've been thinking to myself, like, is there something that could actually save this film? Could it bounce back? You know, parents who are not online, who are not reading the Rotten Tomatoes reviews, who just want to bring their kids maybe some retroactive Disney PR, but I don't think so.
The hole that has been dug is just getting deeper and deeper and deeper. I mean, guys, this film has a 1.6 rating on IMDb and the controversies just won't stop.
Again, it literally, this film is cursed. That is, that is the only explanation in my mind.
And I mean, now people have moved on from the original controversies and the original scandals of the terrible reviews. And now the focus is wholly on Gal Gadot and Rachel Ziegler and Palestine and Israel.
And again, that doesn't seem like the thing that you want dominating the news cycle about a Disney princess film, but you know, hey, you know, Rachel, I'm gonna give it to you. Because in all of those interviews back in 2022, you were saying, this is not about true love.
This is about her being a leader and her coming into her own and her father helping her save the kingdom.

Well, Rachel, here you go. You are dealing with real issues.
Geopolitics is dominating your film. Maybe that's what you wanted all along.
But the point being now, again, all the other controversies, they're kind of forgetting them. Now articles are coming out about how all of this transpired, how all of the conflict, the political conflicts were handled on set over the last year and a half.
But apparently, Disney literally had to hire a social media guru to help or manage Rachel after she posted F Trump and said that she hopes that Trump supporters never know peace. This was a variety headline.
After Rachel Zegler posted F Donald Trump on Instagram, Disney paid a social media guru to work with a Snow White star to vet any posts before the film's March 21st release. And obviously, after that original post of Hope That None of Us Know Peace, she made a response and she said, I, you know, that was out of line.
I'm so sorry. I was being emotional.
I think the guru put that together. Now, in addition to that, they also had to hire extra security for Gal Gadot over the last year and a half because she was receiving death threats for speaking out in favor of Israel.
And a producer literally had to fly from LA to New York to tell Rachel to her face that she needed to tone down the pro-Palestine comments, and she said back to him, no I'm not doing that, I'm not deleting anything. And so that was kind of just a moot point.
And so now, after all this is coming out, fans are in a political uproar yet again. It just keeps following, this damn film.
They are now calling everything that has transpired over the last week a smear campaign against Rachel for being bold enough to speak about her political values and to stand up for Palestine, and they're saying that it's hypocritical that Rachel was punished or disciplined for her comments and Gal was supported. And I think it's fair that fans were concerned about that, but I also think that they are overlooking a key difference with the actions of these two women.
Now, Rachel was adding things like free Palestine into promotional posts about Snow White. I mean, read this tweet as an example.
This is again from Variety. After Rachel Ziegler hit the stage at Disney's D23 fan event to introduce the first official trailer of Snow White, she thanked supporters effusively in an ex post.
One minute later, she added an afterthought in the same thread. Again, this is a promotional post about Snow White.
She added, quote, and always remember Free Palestine. Many inside the studio expressed shock that the Snow White star would commingle the promotion of its 270 million tentpole with any kind of political statement.
And then they say a Disney executive raised the studio's concerns with Zegler's team while the film's producer, Mark Platt, flew to New York to speak directly to her. And so what I'm saying here is that this was not Rachel simply making comments in her own time, which she is totally free to do.
She's allowed to have her own political opinion. She's allowed to disagree with Gal Gadot or whoever.
But the fact of the matter is she was involving politics into promotions. That is a major difference.
And producers have a right to be concerned. They have a right to handle that.
They are paying her millions upon millions of dollars to represent them and this film to act like Snow White. It is literally her job to embody that and she wasn't.
Now simultaneously, Gal Gadot was making comments about Israel and her Israeli heritage during the promotional period of the film over the last year and a half since October 7th but she never made those comments at events for Snow White. She never added those comments to posts about the film.
I saw fans screenshotting something that Rachel had said versus a I Stand With Israel post that Gal Gadot had made and they were like, oh look at the hypocrisy. Okay well one was a promotional post, the other one was a post that she did on her own time because she is an Israeli woman.
She served in the IDF. She obviously is going to have an opinion about all of this but it wasn't directly connected to the film.
Now had she acted differently, had she included these comments into promotion for the Rachel had, I think that that would be a more blatant example of hypocrisy that we could get into, but there is that nuance here. That is a major difference.
And to be fair, Rachel's comments about politics, whether they be about Palestine or about Trump and Trump supporters, were almost always inflammatory and hateful. I mean, she was swearing constantly.
She was flipping people off in her stories. I hope you never know peace.
I mean, she attacked half the country and involved Snow White in all of it. So again, I'm not surprised that it caused an issue.
I'm not surprised that Disney was concerned. But obviously, a lot of people online are not looking at that nuance.
They're still very angry. And now they are actually, for the first time in years, rallying around behind her.
And this has gotten so big that the son of that producer, Mark Platt, who flew to New York to handle the situation, responded to a comment about the entire situation. So a person left a comment on one of his Instagram posts and said, your dad flew to New York City to reprimand a young actress.
Any words on this? Because that's creepy as hell and uncalled for. People have the right to free speech.
No, shame on your father. And then Jonah Platt, who was Mark Platt's son, he responded and he said, you really want to do this? Yeah.
My dad, the producer of an enormous piece of Disney IP with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, had to leave his family to fly across the country to reprimand his 20-year-old employee for dragging her personal politics into the middle of promoting a movie for which she signed a multi-million dollar contract to get paid and do publicity for. And that's a very important fact.
When you are paid to do a movie, you are also paid after the fact to do the publicity, again, to play the part of the role that you were hired to play. This is called adult responsibility and accountability, and her actions clearly hurt the film's box office.
Free speech does not mean that you are 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 of the colleagues and crew and the blue collar workers who depend on that movie to be successful.
Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged. I mean the man pulled no punches.
That last line specifically that is a mic drop moment I think that we could just like blast that everywhere for a bunch of different people in the world but narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged. Again I think like half the country needs to hear there's like, regardless of what you believe politically or about this film or about Israel and Palestine, which somehow is now involved in Snow White, regardless of what you believe, he is correct.
They are paying her millions upon millions of dollars to represent a brand, to represent a film, to represent a beloved character. And she failed at that at literally every turn from shaming the original production, from saying that it scared her, to involving her personal politics in direct promotional posts, to using heated explicit language to attack half the country that might've wanted to come see this film.
And unfortunately for Disney, that was not something, no matter how many gurus they hired, no matter how producers flew, however many places to handle it, that was not something that they could outrun. And Link summed it up well.
I don't need these folks to be social justice warriors, right? If you're in a Disney movie, be in a Disney movie, be excited, be happy. I'm not looking to you for answers on foreign conflicts.
You know what I'm saying? On major Middle East affairs and how to negotiate peace deals. I'm not looking to Rachel Zegler, a dumbass little actress, for how to negotiate world peace.
So just do the movie. And I really wonder if Rachel Zegler is gonna have a career years down the line, because how can you book an actress? I'm sure she got millions of dollars for the film.
I'm sure she was compensated well. You book an actress, you pay her well, and then she goes out there and speaks so negatively about the project and everybody involved.
So I think producers are gonna think twice about having her come on to join their films. So the point being, this entire film, it was just a perfect storm.
I mean, the controversies involving the stars, the progressive decisions that they made involving the story, all of that set it on a bad path three years ago. And you would think that because it was three years ago, maybe people would forget or move on.
But I mean, the final nail in the coffin was that it was just an objectively bad film that should have never been made, that audiences didn't want in the first place, especially not with the progressive modern take. No one wanted that.
No one enjoyed it. I mean, even the lib film critics were literally paid to support all of that.
Even they couldn't get behind it. And so, of course, per usual, I think that there are a lot of lessons here, and they are things that I talk about repeatedly on the show and in my content, but when you compromise things, when you compromise artistic integrity to appease people or to capture a political moment, a social justice moment, people can tell.
We know, and we are sick of it, so stop compromising. Just focus on making things that are inspirational, that are good, that are rich, that will make people feel things other than anger.
I mean, we are really asking for the bare minimum here. And then secondly, when you are hired for a job, whether you are an actress or a plumber or a marketing executive, you are expected to do all parts of that job, even if it spills into your personal life like it often does with entertainment and acting.
And as adults, we naturally will face consequences and repercussions for not living up to that standard that we were hired to do. I mean, Disney, you failed.
This should be the end. This should be a glaring stop sign from all of us to literally never try this again.
I mean, please, like, listen to audiences. And if you're not going to listen to us, finally listen to the film critics that you revere who are also telling you to stop.
Like, give us something to love and celebrate again.

That is what we want.

We are starved in the desert for film and creativity that inspires and welcomes all regardless of your political backgrounds.

Maybe, just maybe, you should try that.

And then we might just show up for your films.