The actor Gal Gadot has said that she credits a “pressure on celebrities to speak out against Israel” with the failure of last year’s live action remake of Snow White.
Her co-star, Rachel Zegler, showed her support for Palestine while promoting the film, writing on X: “i love you all so much! thank you for the love and for 120m views on our trailer in just 24 hours! what a whirlwind. i am in the thick of rehearsals for romeo + juliet so i’m gonna get outta here. bye for now. and always remember, free palestine.”
Shortly after the post, producer Marc Platt flew to New York to speak to the star. His son, Jonah, later called her actions “immature” and said they were to blame for the film’s poor reviews.
Gadot is Israeli and reportedly began to receive an increased number of death threats in the aftermath of Zegler’s post, with Disney upping her security as a result.
As reported by the Jerusalem Post, Gadot said she “really enjoyed filming” Snow White during an appearance on Israeli TV show The A Talks, adding she had “even enjoyed working with Rachel Zegler”.
Gadot said she had been “sure this movie was going to be a huge success”, but “then October 7 happened” and there was “a lot of pressure” on celebrities in Hollywood “to speak out against Israel”.
The actor went on to say she was “disappointed” the film was “greatly affected” by such pressure and “didn’t do well” at the box office as a result.
Marc Webb’s live action remake had already been dogged by negative buzz over issues including uncertainty about their approach to the dwarves. Speaking in 2022, the actor Peter Dinklage called the film “fucking backwards”.
“I was a little taken aback by [the fact] they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White,” Dinklage told podcaster Marc Maron, “but you’re still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”.
The film, whose production budget was an estimated $270m, ended up taking around $205m worldwide – a disappointing but not catastrophic result. Reviews, however, were almost universally negative, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calling it “exhausting awful”.
Gadot served as a combat fitness instructor in the IDF army for two years, including during the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006.
Speaking in 2024, Gadot spoke at the Anti-Defamation League’s summit, saying: “Never did I imagine that on the streets of the United States, and different cities around the world, we would see people not condemning Hamas, but celebrating, justifying and cheering on a massacre of Jews.”
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