“F*ck Donald Trump” may not be the message the Walt Disney Company wants its Snow White star putting out there right now.
But that’s what they’ve got, even as Rachel Zegler tries to walk it back.
In now delated posts on Instagram, Zegler slammed the former and future president for his November 5 election win over Kamala Harris as “a deep sickness in this country. The alum of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, who is currently on Broadway in Romeo + Juliet, went on to lament “the sheer amount of people who showed up for this man who threatens our democracy.”
“t is terrifying the number of people who stand behind what this man preaches,” Zegler added in what seems to be posts made during the performance of the Shakespeare play in New York late last week. “It is a foolish subscription to a false sense of security, of masculinity, of intelligence, of patriotism, and of humanity. there is no help, no counsel, in any of them. I could go on. I won’t. I feel sad. You probably do, too. F*ck this”
“May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace,” Zegler also wrote on the Meta-owned platform paraphrasing singer Ethel Cain’s comments in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s reelection win. “Another four years of hatred, leaning us towards a world I do not want to live in. Leaning us towards a world that will be hard to raise my daughter in.”
With Snow White out next spring and Netflix’s animated flick Spellbound out next week, the 23-year-old Zegler (who doesn’t have a daughter) quickly found herself getting some very hard knocks in the social media world for her condemnation of Trump and his MAGA base.
As Trump continued naming controversial nominees like ex-Reps Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and RFK Jr. to his 2.0 administration, that blowback was followed by a full-on hurricane Thursday from Megyn Kelly and her pals on the Ruthless podcast.
“There’s something wrong with this person,” Kelly bluntly said of Zegler today.
“Hello, Disney, you’re going to have to redo your film again, because this woman is a pig, and you fired Gina Carano for far less than this nonsense,” ex-Fox News anchor Kelly threw down with the Ruthless hosts and her podcast audience today over the already controversial live action forthcoming Snow White. “I’m sorry, Disney, she has to go right now.”
Carano is currently heading towards trial against Disney in September 2025 in her Elon Musk-backed sex discrimination suit over being canned in 2021 from The Mandalorian for social media posts of her own.
Now working on projects with the hard conservative Daily Wire, the former marital arts fighter denies Disney’s assertion that she decided to “publicly trivialize the Holocaust by comparing criticism of political conservatives to the annihilation of millions of Jewish people” In fact, Carano says she was targeted for her more contrarian POV to the usual Hollywood progressiveness, while Star Wars franchise co-stars like Mark Hamill and Pedro Pascal were allowed to blast Trump during his first term all the time with no recrimination.
Having reinvented herself the past few years in no small part due to becoming a ceilometer for the right wing, Kelly went on today to hit the Mouse House harder as she tossed out the red meat to her followers.
“They’re dealing with the controversy with ABC, with one of their biggest stars, Michael Strahan, who refused to put his hand over his heart for the anthem and the blowback just for that,” short-lived NBC host Kelly added with the Ruthless co-host Michael Duncan stating beforehand “this comes a time when Disney stock keeps going down.” (Disney stock was actually up nearly 10% today after a strong Q4 earnings report)
“You’re going to put out a Disney film with Snow White, a beloved American character, with a woman who hates more than half the country, the half that just elected Donald Trump?” Kelly said to her SiriusXM listeners. “This is an incredible pivot point right now.”
“We’ll see which way the woke Disney decides to go,” Kelly concluded in terms very similar to what Florida Governor Ron DeSantis used the past few years in the now abandoned political and legal disputes with one of the Sunshine State’s largest employers.
Zegler took to IG this afternoon as the conservative media storm swirled to say sorry.
To that, having weathered a previous storm with Zegler over comments about the premise of a modern Snow White, Disney are silent right now.
In a town where deep Democratic donors and studio bosses are trying to gauge the cultural temperature right now as Trump’s second inauguration nears, what Disney does or doesn’t say about Zegler’s comments could become the standard out of Hollywood for the next four years.
It’s early days, but hot off that earnings report Thursday, the Bob Iger-run company has no plans to push back the Gal Gadot co-staring and Greta Gerwig co-written Snow White from its March 21, 2025 premiere, Deadline has learned.
This post will be updated if Disney responds to Deadline’s request for comment.