Rachel Zegler is explaining more about her Snow White will be different from past portrayals, including the character in Disney’s classic 1937 animated film.

The 2025 live-action version of the tale falls “back to another version of Snow White that was told in history, where she survived a snowstorm that occurred when she was a baby,” the West Side Story actress told Variety. Zegler explained that “the king and queen decided to name her Snow White to remind her of her resilience. One of the core points in our film for any young woman or young person is remembering how strong you actually are.”

The animated Disney classic was inspired by the Germanic 1812 fairy tale by The Brothers Grimm, which describes a queen who gives birth to a daughter “with a skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony, and she was named Snow-white” and dies. But there are other, older versions of the tale, which are primarily about the relationships between mothers and daughters, not what color the main character’s skin is.

Zegler, whose father is Colombian, has faced backlash since her casting was announced in 2021. She posted on social media just hours later, “yes i am snow white no i am not bleaching my skin for the role,” although it’s since been deleted, per the Los Angeles Times.

Zegler fondly recalls watching actress and singer Brandy, a Black woman portraying the title character onscreen for the first time, in the beloved 1997 TV movie Cinderella.

“I grew up in a house where that was Cinderella,” Zegler said. “Obviously, we watched the cartoon. But a child’s mind is the most amazing thing, where it’s just like, ‘OK, that’s Cinderella.’ But the blond-haired, blue-eyed, blue-dress Cinderella from the 1950s cartoon is also Cinderella. Also, Hilary Duff is Cinderella in A Cinderella Story. I was able to comprehend those things at a young age.”

People were upset with Zegler criticizing some aspects of the tale early on.

“The reality is that the cartoon was made 85 years ago, and therefore is extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for in the world,” Zegler told Entertainment Weekly in 2022. “And so when we came to reimagining the actual role of Snow White, it became about ‘the fairest of them all’ meaning who is the most just, and who can become a fantastic leader.”

Romance will still be part of the story, but not the entire story, she told Variety.

“I would never want to box someone in and say, ‘If you want love, then you can’t work.’ Or ‘If you want to work, then you can’t have a family.’ It’s not true. It’s never been true,” Zegler said. “It can be very upsetting when things get taken out of context or jokes don’t land. The love story is very integral.”

The new Snow White arrives in theater March 21, 2025.

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