Hi everyone and thank you for tuning into the 424th episode of Awards Chatter, the Hollywood

Reporter's Awards Podcast, I'm the host Scott Feinberg and my guest today is one of

2021's breakout stars.

Her discovery is a Cinderella or at least only in Hollywood story.

Four years ago at the age of just 16 she was forwarded a tweet about a casting call

from a person she had never met but who admired her singing on YouTube.

Then like 30,000 other people she recorded an audition on her iPhone and emailed it into

a casting agency.

Then she was called back nine different times over a year before ultimately being plucked

out of her senior year of high school and going to work as the leading lady in a big screen

reimagining of a musical which had previously won the Best Picture Oscar and which had long

been a favorite of hers under the direction of the most famous filmmaker in the world.

And then having never previously appeared in a film she knocked the assignment out of

the park in one of the greatest film debuts ever with the New York Times raving that

she quote, sing some of the most challenging numbers with full-throwed at authority.

The national board of review voting her the year's best actress and the Hollywood foreign

press association making her the youngest ever and first ever Latina winner of its best

actress in a musical or comedy golden globe award.

I'm talking of course about the now 20 year old phenom who plays Maria in Steven Spielberg's

version of West Side Story Rachel Zegler over the course of our conversation.

Zegler and I discuss her life before her West Side Story journey what the casting and

filming of West Side Story were like for her.

...