Actor Gal Gadot has blamed the box office failure of Disney’s 2025 live-action Snow White on the “pressure on celebrities to speak out against Israel”.
Rachel Zegler, 24, who played the film’s lead princess, showed support for Palestine while promoting Snow White on social media.
Gadot, 40, who is Israeli, reportedly began to receive an increased number of death threats following the post and Disney had to pay for increased security for the star and her family.
Speaking on the Israeli celebrity interview programme The A Talks, Gadot said she had “really enjoyed filming” Snow White and “even enjoyed working with Rachel Zegler”, per The Jerusalem Post.
The actor said she was “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”.
On 7 October last year, Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages into the Gaza Strip. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed 61,897 people in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, which does not specify how many were fighters or civilians but says around half were women and children.
Gadot admitted she was “disappointed” that the film was “greatly affected” by the pressure on celebrities in Hollywood to “speak out against Israel” and “didn’t do well” at the box office as a result.
Snow White had a sluggish start at the box office, making just $43m (£33m) over its opening weekend against an estimated production cost of $270m. Reviews of the film were abysmal, with critics finding the remake “disappointing” and “confusing”.
“This Disney musical offers nothing to the talented West Side Story star [Zegler],” The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey wrote in her one-star review of the movie, “and features a dud of a performance from Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen”.
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Gadot was born in Israel, where, at just 20 years old, she served as a combat fitness instructor in the IDF army for two years.
Her stint with the IDF included her participation in the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006, which caused more than 1,000 Lebanese civilian deaths and left more than one million displaced. The conflict is believed to have killed 165 Israelis.
In 2024, a year after Hamas’s October 7 attack inside Israel, Gadot gave an impassioned speech 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.”
Gadot’s enduring support of Israel sharply contrasted with her co-star Zegler’s support of Palestine, fueling rumours of on-set drama at the time.
