In London, Rachel Zegler was the star of the summer. Eight times a week – at six evening Evita performances and two matinees – she sang ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’ from the balcony of the Palladium. This audacious innovation from director Jamie Lloyd (how dare he stage the show’s biggest number outside the auditorium!) helped to make Evita a crossover sensation. Over the show’s 12-week run, more than 130,000 people rocked up outside to watch Zegler’s powerhouse vocal and millions more will have seen clips on TikTok.
Zegler says she was “100 per cent” on board with the balcony scene from the moment Lloyd proposed it. The only problem was getting clearance from Westminster Council, which came late in the rehearsal process. “I have no fear of singing in front of the general public – I’ve been doing it since I was a kid,” the 24-year-old says matter-of-factly. “That’s kind of where I’m most comfortable.”
Today, Zegler also looks comfortable as she walks into a grand, high-ceilinged room at another West End landmark, Theatre Royal Drury Lane. She’s glam and camera-ready in a grey Patou jacket – her next interview is a filmed one with Evita‘s composer Andrew Lloyd Webber – but her manner is friendly and unaffected. At the end, Zegler apologises for the “buzzing” of her phone, which was so quiet NME didn’t even hear it.
Zegler took her final curtain call nearly two months ago but she’s promoting the Evita cast recording album. “I love that it was recorded live at the Palladium, because so much of the magic comes from those energetic exchanges [between cast and audience],” she says. She singles out ‘Buenos Aires’, her energetic duet with Diego Andres Rodriguez’s Che, as a particular challenge. “It [involved] singing all the way up in my belt range after having done a five-minute dance number,” she points out. “You really can look back afterwards and pat yourself on the back.”
She also relished singing ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’ from the balcony, a staging choice that could have looked stunty if the overall production wasn’t so thrilling. Evita, a sung-through musical based on the life of Argentine politician Eva Perón, was first performed in 1978. Jamie Lloyd, a West End disruptor who cast The Pussycat Dolls‘ Nicole Scherzinger in the celebrated 2024 revival of Sunset Boulevard, reinvented it with body-popping choreographer, cool costumes and Zegler front and centre as Perón: gutsy, grasping, and ultimately grandiose.
“Eva Perón was an idolised politician, but we don’t idolise politicians anymore,” Zegler says. “So I think [our] revamp of making the character in this concert-style show a pop star, a rock star, is more relatable than having her in a period-appropriate pantsuit walking around talking politics. She was a rock star of her generation, so we just put that more in your face.”
Zegler’s magnetic performance would have been labelled a breakout if she hadn’t had one already. When she was 16, this self-described “theatre kid” from suburban New Jersey responded to Steven Spielberg‘s open casting call for his movie remake of West Side Story. She landed the lead role of María over 30,000 others, then won a Golden Globe for her captivating work in the film which was released in December 2021.
She describes Spielberg graciously as her “creative sponsor”, but also says she took the whole thing in her stride. “My aspirations growing up never included being in movies, [so] it didn’t really scare me too much,” she says. “Steven made me feel very calm and comforted. He had only ever done films, and I’d only ever done musicals, so we kind of were able to shake hands and say: ‘I’ve got you, and you’ve got me.'”
“A lot of people think I was plucked from obscurity, but I’ve been training for this all my life”
Zegler’s next big film role looked a little less dreamy. When she landed the lead in Snow White, a lavish live-action reimagining of Disney’s 1937 animated film, racist trolls objected to her casting because of her Colombian heritage. “Never in a million years did I imagine that this would be a possibility for me,” Zegler said in 2022. “You don’t normally see Snow Whites that are of Latin descent.”
Sadly, this non-scandal was followed by a longer-lasting controversy during the film’s rollout. When the trailer premiered in August 2024, she used X to thank fans for giving it 120 million views in 24 hours, then added: “And always remember, free Palestine.” Zegler had publicly supported Gaza since 2021 but after the October 7 attacks of 2023, the conflict was never far from the headlines. Zegler’s perceived conflation of her political stance with a family-friendly Disney movie was deemed ill-advised by some industry figures.
and always remember, free palestine.
— rachel zegler (she/her/hers) (@rachelzegler) August 12, 2024
In March 2025, four days after Snow White opened in cinemas, Variety reported that the film’s producer Marc Platt had flown to New York at the time to “speak directly” with her. Neither Platt nor Zegler has ever spoken about their alleged tête-à-tête, but the producer’s son Jonah appeared to confirm it happened in an Instagram comment he later deleted.
When NME asks how she handled this additional pressure at an already intense time, she speaks carefully but without dropping eye contact. “You know, I’m really proud of my work, and that’s the best thing to focus on in moments like that. Because as human as I can be, and as human as I think all people who are in the public [sphere] deserve to be, it ultimately becomes about the work,” she says.
She elegantly sidesteps NME‘s suggestion that her Evita triumph has put the spotlight back on her talent. “I’m sure anyone in my situation would feel like it’s some sort of emotional whiplash, but I got major media attention from a very young age. I learned that if I wasn’t going to read the bad, I wasn’t going to read the good either,” she says.
“My happiness really does matter… I’ve learned in the past couple years to put that first”
Given that she avoids reviews, it must have been affirming to have immediate feedback from Evita‘s fans inside and outside the theatre. “That’s what it’s about – letting the work speak for itself,” she says. “I am an extremely industrious performer. I have been refining my craft since I was 12 years old, and that is not something that a lot of people in my position can say. You know, a lot of people think I was plucked from obscurity, but I’ve been training for this all my life. It’s finally come to fruition in a way that I’m able to display eight times a week. They can never take that away from me.”
Because Evita was such a West End smash, everyone is expecting a Broadway transfer with Zegler returning as Perón, but nothing has been announced yet. She has, however, plotted a return to the Palladium in a concert staging of The Last Five Years, a two-hander in which she’ll star opposite Ben Platt, son of Snow White producer Marc. Tickets for the seven-show run next March sold out instantly when they went on sale last week.
At this point in her career, how does she decide between another film role and a rewarding but exhausting stage run? She had no social life during Evita and swore off alcohol and caffeine entirely.
“I mean, sometimes it’s not up to me. And sometimes it’s [about] the most financially responsible thing to do,” Zegler replies. It’s a misconception that an actor becomes “disgustingly rich” once they begin working in film, she says. “I pay my rent, I pay for my groceries. I’m doing everything [to get by] like everybody else, but also my happiness really does matter,” she continues. “I’ve learned in the past couple years to really put that first, and Evita is my passion project. So if the opportunity were to come up again, it would be a discussion, but I really do think it would take priority all over again.”
‘Evita‘ the album is available to stream now with the physical vinyl and CD available for pre-order.