One tweet is all it took. “Thank me when you’re famous,” wrote Rachel Zegler’s friend Makena Reynolds, who sent the then-highschooler a tweet in 2019 announcing an open casting call for “West Side Story.”
One “I-don’t-know-how-i-booked-it” self-tape and several months of callbacks later, Zegler got the part. She was going to be Maria in Steven Spielberg’s newest musical adaptation.
“It’s kind of crazy to look back on that girl who was singing show tunes in her bathroom, and I wonder what she would think of me now,” the 20-year-old tells Variety.
The young actress says hers was the second self-tape Spielberg saw during casting calls for Maria. “I sent him my first take in January, and I started going in steadily to meet with Cindy Tolan up until March,” she says.
Later that month, Zegler received a phone call saying that Spielberg wanted to meet with...
One “I-don’t-know-how-i-booked-it” self-tape and several months of callbacks later, Zegler got the part. She was going to be Maria in Steven Spielberg’s newest musical adaptation.
“It’s kind of crazy to look back on that girl who was singing show tunes in her bathroom, and I wonder what she would think of me now,” the 20-year-old tells Variety.
The young actress says hers was the second self-tape Spielberg saw during casting calls for Maria. “I sent him my first take in January, and I started going in steadily to meet with Cindy Tolan up until March,” she says.
Later that month, Zegler received a phone call saying that Spielberg wanted to meet with...
- 12/10/2021
- by Katie Song
- Variety Film + TV
Chicago – “When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way … “ And there is no more appropriate way to lyrically pay tribute to a classic staging of the Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim musical, “West Side Story.” There is a new staging currently at Lyric Opera of Chicago, which runs through June 2nd, 2019. Click here for more details and tickets.
Play Rating: 4.5/5.0
The musical first opened in 1957, and its message of fearing the “other” – by adapting the universality of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” – will resonate as long as people suffer through their bigotry. Two rival gangs, girl-from-one-side-guy-from-another then meet/fall in love, tragedy ensues, and along the way are one of the greatest collections of songs/lyrics in one musical, so standard that they are practically in everyone’s DNA. It’s “West Side Story,” babies, and this latest adaptation at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is spot on entertaining.
Play Rating: 4.5/5.0
The musical first opened in 1957, and its message of fearing the “other” – by adapting the universality of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” – will resonate as long as people suffer through their bigotry. Two rival gangs, girl-from-one-side-guy-from-another then meet/fall in love, tragedy ensues, and along the way are one of the greatest collections of songs/lyrics in one musical, so standard that they are practically in everyone’s DNA. It’s “West Side Story,” babies, and this latest adaptation at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is spot on entertaining.
- 5/15/2019
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
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