How Rachel Zegler beat 30,000 hopefuls to play Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story

Rising star Rachel Zegler reveals how she beat 30,000 other hopefuls to play Maria in West Side Story and the perils of fame.

Landing the lead role in a remake of one of the most acclaimed films ever made – for the most successful director in history – was never going to be an easy task, but rising star Rachel Zegler had no idea just how long and hard a journey it was going to be.

The 20-year-old was just 16 when she answered an open casting call via Twitter from Steven Spielberg for his take on the beloved musical West Side Story, along with 30,000 other applicants.

She knew she loved the musical ever since she saw the Oscar-winning 1961 film version on TV as a six-year-old and had already played the lead role of Maria in a not-for-profit theatre production in her native New Jersey, but making her film debut in a $100m blockbuster was an entirely different prospect.

Even Spielberg was daunted by the task ahead. Not only did the earlier version win a mighty 10 Oscars including Best Picture, but in the versatile director’s long and celebrated career that’s included three Oscars of his own, as well as hits from Jaws to Jurassic Park and Saving Private Ryan, to Schindler’s List, he’d never made a musical.

Steven Spielberg and Rachel Zegler at the New York premiere of West Side Story last month. Picture: Getty Images for 20th Century Studios

“We actually felt he and I had so much in common because it was my first movie, and it was his first musical,” Zegler says with a laugh.

“So, we just kind of bonded over the fact that we were both having a first in our lives and he was a testament to it’s never too late to have a first.”

Zegler’s audition process took the best part of a year, from January 2018 to January 2019, singing, dancing, acting and reading with different candidates in a process she says was incredibly intense and stressful but also hugely gratifying.

And landing the coveted role also was the beginning of another journey as she learned how to cope with the sometimes harsh public glare and “instant life change” of following in the footsteps of screen great Natalie Wood.

“All of a sudden so many people knew my name and my face and my story and I was being publicised as this Cinderella-story success overnight, and it was absolutely wild,” she says. “How can one prepare for that? And then, obviously, there came the scepticism and the comparison to Natalie Wood and all of that stuff that just seemed to come out of nowhere and it was really like a crash course in quote unquote, fame and celebrity. I’m really grateful for it – but in the moment I was just so shaken by all of it.”

Rachel Zegler as Maria in West Side Story. Picture: Niko Tavernise. © 2021 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Thankfully, Spielberg was by her side every step of the way.

Zegler says ET was the first movie that ever made her cry, and she cracked the director up by admitting on the day they first met that the historical biopic Lincoln (also written by West Side Story scribe Tony Kushner) was her favourite of his films.

“He asked me how old I was and said ‘that means you were 11 when it came out – you’re the youngest Lincoln fan in the world’.

“He’s one of the sweetest people. He taught me how to be a human being genuinely and how to balance your humanity and your celebrity at the same time. I absolutely adore him beyond the opportunity he’s given me, he’s just also been a very great creative sponsor through all of this.”

Spielberg’s sumptuous version of the age-old tale of star-crossed lovers and warring gangs – the original Broadway musical was based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – comes with a grittier and more contemporary edge.

In it, the local Jets and the Puerto Rican immigrant Sharks are battling over an ever-shrinking slice of New York turf, being demolished to make way for what is now the Lincoln Centre of the Performing Arts.

Not only does it lean into the racism and intolerance explored in the original, this version also speaks to gentrification and how “immigrant” has once again become a dirty word in the US in recent years.

Rachel Zegler and Rita Moreno at the Los Angeles premiere of West Side Story. Picture: AFP

“It’s very interesting to see how poignant the story still is and how relevant it still is,” she says.

“I just hope that people can watch our film and have a conversation about it and really open themselves up to the idea that we have a lot more in common than we think.

“The Sharks and Jets probably should have been working together to fight the powers that be and that’s really what we all have a problem with, at the end of the day, is the way things are being run and the way that we’re being told that things have to be.”

And where the 1961 film version infamously cast many non-Latin actors in major roles (although Rita Moreno, who also appears in this version, became the first Latina actor to win an Oscar for her role as Anita), Spielberg insisted on more authenticity in his casting, and made the decision not to subtitle the large chunks of Spanish dialogue.

“We have an ensemble of so many different walks of life when it comes to Latin identity,” says Zegler, whose mother is of Colombian descent.

“There was also just this positive vibe as of Latin culture in greeting each other with hugs and kisses (on set) every morning and drinking cafecito in our breaks, and it was just the most fun you could have and you couldn’t get that authenticity anywhere else.”

West Side Story opens in cinemas on Boxing Day.

Originally published as How Rachel Zegler beat 30,000 hopefuls to play Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story