Disney has revealed that during production of its upcoming live action remake of Snow White, women occupied just 30% of the highest paid jobs but had 48% of the lowest paid positions despite the movie being hailed as a showcase for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Snow White is due to be released next year and stars West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler in the title role, Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen and Ansu Kabia as the Huntsman.

Casting Zegler caused a considerable backlash as she is a Latina actress of Colombian descent playing a character who was famously white-skinned in the 1937 animated classic which won Walt Disney
Walt Disney
an honorary Oscar.

In 2022 Zegler told Variety that “you don’t normally see Snow Whites that are of Latin descent. Even though Snow White is really a big deal in Spanish-speaking countries. Blanca Nieves is a huge icon whether you’re talking about the Disney cartoon or just different iterations and the Grimm fairy tale and all the stories that come with it. But you don’t particularly see people who look like me or are me playing roles like that.

“When it was announced, it was a huge thing that was trending on Twitter for days, because all of the people were angry. We need to love them in the right direction. At the end of the day, I have a job to do that I am really excited to do. I get to be a Latina princess.”

Leaked photos supposedly showing the seven dwarfs, who accompany Snow White in the cartoon, revealed that only one of them had a form of dwarfism – American Actor Martin Klebba, star of 2012 fantasy comedy Mirror Mirror. The others were of varying ethnicity and one was female which also angered some fans of the original that portrayed them all as male. The selection was accused of being overly politically correct as well as potentially taking away acting opportunities from the dwarfism community.

Jackass actor Jason ‘Wee Man’ Acuña criticized Disney and said “you’re replacing jobs that people could have as little people. It’s for dwarfs. Why are you hiring ‘Snow White and the seven average people’?” The answer to that question came to light when Disney unveiled a first-look image from the film in October last year which showed that the dwarfs will be computer generated characters on-screen with the actual actors being stand-ins on set. However, even the story itself has been criticized.

Actor Peter Dinklage, who has a form of dwarfism and has played dwarfish characters in his career, dismissed the fairy tale as “backward”. In response, Disney stated that “to avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community.”

The studio’s overall approach to the film has disenchanted David Hand, whose father worked on the classic cartoon with Walt Disney. He told the Daily Telegraph that the duo “would be turning in their graves” as the original was made “with good taste.”

He said it was a “disgrace” that Disney is “trying to do something new with something that was such a great success… They’re making up new woke things and I’m just not into any of that.”

Even the Prince Charming from the original has been replaced with a new character called Jonathan played by Andrew Burnap. His part was revealed by Zegler who described the original movie as being “extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power.” She likened the heroic Prince Charming’s behaviour to that of a “stalker” and hinted that the new film will depart from the 1812 Brothers Grimm fairytale that the original is based on. “She’s not going to be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love,” Zegler told Variety.

However, it appears that the movie’s beauty may only be skin deep as it was far from a showcase for equality behind the scenes. Despite being set in a fantasy forest, the movie was actually shot at Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom from March to July 2022. Studios filming in the UK have to make detailed disclosures about staff pay and the filings for Snow White reveal that in April 2022 women’s average hourly pay was 11.8% lower than men’s. Likewise, taking the middle number when hourly pay was ranked from highest to lowest shows that women got 8.5% less than men.

This doesn’t take into account the staff of the agencies that contributed to the movie but the filings show that a total of 958 Disney employees worked on Snow White in the UK so the sample size was large. The filings show that just 34% of them were female so women weren’t widely represented overall or in the upper pay segments. Perhaps Disney should have addressed this imbalance before adjusting the perceived inequality in the story.