celeb news Rachel Zegler comments on Ansel Elgort allegations, makes it about it herself

[DONTYELLATME]

The intense press days preceding West Side Story’s December release, when Zegler took part in interview after interview, have passed. One moment remains in my mind. In a roundtable conversation, women in the cast—Zegler, Ariana DeBose, and Rita Moreno—were questioned about controversy surrounding costar Ansel Elgort. In 2020, a woman accused Elgort of sexually assaulting her in 2014, when she was reportedly 17 years old and he was 20. Why would it be on his female costars, of all people, to speak on his actions, I ask? Zegler is immediately alert, open to the question. She too doesn’t understand why throughout the film’s junket, she was the one receiving questions about Elgort’s actions, “even though the person in question was present,” she says. (Elgort, who reportedly participated in only group interviews during the junket, said initially in a now-deleted Instagram post that he had a “brief, legal, and entirely consensual relationship” with the woman and denied all allegations of sexual assault. “I have never and would never assault anyone.”) 

“It was a real gut punch, honestly,” says Zegler of being asked to answer for her male coworker. “I reverted back to this brain space I was in [back in] June of 2020, when the accusation surfaced. We were in the middle of the first wave of lockdown, and there was nothing to do but doom-scroll. Those days were some of the worst mental health days I’ve ever had. I was sitting there having just turned 19, on the precipice of what was promised to be the biggest moment in my life, and was being held accountable [by the public] for accusations that not only had nothing to do with me but were made about a situation that was said to have occurred [five] years prior to when I had met and worked with this person. With no thought to the fact that I was also 17 when I met this person, 17 when I worked with them, 17 and 18 when I had to do love scenes.” 

 

Much has been read into what Zegler did or didn’t say about Elgort, with the internet desperate for clues into how she responded to the situation. Behind the scenes, she says, she was devastated. “[There is] inherent discomfort that comes with that realization that there are tons of people who think that you have to answer for the actions of an adult male who can speak for himself. It is so wildly disappointing at every turn, no matter how you slice it. No matter how many times I’ve tried to justify people’s concern when it comes to me in my brain, but then realizing that it comes from a place of me having to answer for that, and not them actually caring about whether or not I was okay, was really hurtful. And also paying no mind when it came to the conversation between myself and these other incredible women in my cast, without any thought process to our experiences as women in the industry who constantly find ourselves in close encounters with men in power, and a very iconic woman in Hollywood who has spoken about her experience with sexual assault. In the grand scheme of things with this woman who has come forward with these allegations, I cannot imagine what she had to go through. If I’m sitting here thinking that those days were traumatizing for me, I don’t pretend to know. I could never know,” Zegler says, finally adding, “I really don’t have anything to do with this conversation, and I’m looking forward to moving past it.”

 

https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a39727526/rachel-zegler-interview-may-2022/ 

Edited April 21, 2022 by DONTYELLATME

[Attitude]

This girl gives off Lea Michele vibes.

[Alyssa Edwards]

[popmusicisdead]

i get what she's saying but she could've just said that it's not her place to speak on these matters that are unrelated to her but not her giving 2 whole essays 

[Nightingale]

She was literally directly asked how the situation impacted her? How else should she respond?

[Taylor Sniffs]

Me when asked to write an essay with a minimum of 3000 words

[Thinking Of You]

Why don’t celebrities just be like “…I don’t know.” or “I don’t have anything to say about that”? It’s so easy to say 

[BOOMBAYAH]

16 minutes ago, Nightingale said:

She was literally directly asked how the situation impacted her? How else should she respond?

This.

11 minutes ago, Thinking Of You said:

Why don’t celebrities just be like “…I don’t know.” or “I don’t have anything to say about that”? It’s so easy to say 

She was essentially saying that for ages and got dragged for it.

[Gui Blackout]

16 minutes ago, Nightingale said:

She was literally directly asked how the situation impacted her? How else should she respond?

Right  

 

And it's actually others who have been making Ansel's allegations about her. The fact that she even has address a man's issue that has nothing to do with her is kinda gross

[Protocol]

The PR effort to avoid this topic during the movie's Oscar campaign was quite something.

[futurenostalgic]

she gets ppl so heated, it’s funny

 

i also screamed @ this. ariana is so messy 

 

[sickboy]

She was asked about it. Nothing wrong with this.

[Lovett]

59 minutes ago, Nightingale said:

She was literally directly asked how the situation impacted her? How else should she respond?

Literally. The OP was in such a fury to try and drag her for... answering a direct question she was asked, they couldn't even spell her name correctly.  This damn forum.

[Katamari]

42 minutes ago, futurenostalgic said:

she gets ppl so heated, it’s funny

 

i also screamed @ this. ariana is so messy 

 

What a legend  

[JoJo]

1 hour ago, Nightingale said:

She was literally directly asked how the situation impacted her? How else should she respond?

Yeah this hate against her is getting really weird

[Archetype]

She answered the question that was asked, OP seek help.  

[MALAMENTE]

If she was asked about how it affected her how else was she supposed to answer? Lol

[drivers license]

why does she get so hated now  i ain't reading all that, but isn't Ansel innocent?

[Stepfon]

How else was she suppose to respond?

[Jay07]

3 hours ago, Attitude said:

This girl gives off Lea Michele vibes.

I could tell when she started whining about not being invited to the Oscars while she was at the UK for another job and made them invite her to be a presenter.

[Mr. Mendes]

1 hour ago, private radio said:

why does she get so hated now  i ain't reading all that, but isn't Ansel innocent?

To my knowledge he was never cleared of any wrong doing, but he's also never been held legally responsible for anything either. He did admit to having been in some sort of relationship with the girl who accused him, but of course denied that it was anything wrong. We'll probably never know for sure, nothing else has come out about him (that I'm aware of anyway), but I think it's probably best to err on the side of the accuser than it is to err on his side. It's not like it's really ruined his career, he's still getting casted in things so he's not hurting for any relief. But he could've possibly ruined someone's life, so I think that possibility outweighs anything else. 

Edited April 21, 2022 by Mr. Mendes

[Oscar Isaac]

She’s right and there’s nothing wrong with her answer. It’s bullshit that she was made to answer for **** he did before they even met (along with Ariana DeBose and Rita Moreno).

[Scandalous]

Ansel is innocent anyway

[ALittleGauche]

Once again, white patriarchal media trying to destroy a POC woman’s reputation with nonsensical, trivial press sensationalized to sway the reader into disliking her.

[Mariano]

3 hours ago, Stepfon said:

How else was she suppose to respond?

Exactly. She has nothing to do with it in the first place, so what does "making it about herself" even mean