RACHEL ZEGLER

She won a Golden Globe for her first major film role, in West Side Story. She took on a beloved franchise and made the newest Hunger Games a hit. She became a bona fide Disney princess with 2025's Snow White. And now the 23-year-old is checking a new career milestone off her bucket list: Broadway. Here, she chats with her Romeo + Juliet collaborator Jack Antonoff about it all.

- JACK ANTONOFF

When Rachel Zegler walks - bounces, really, in a casual strapless dress - into the Cosmopolitan offices and sees music legend Jack Antonoff, he has just one pre-interview question for her: Is she ready does she know all her lines?

He's not talking about this conversation, obviously, but about Rachel's new leading role as Juliet in the Broadway revival of Romeo + Juliet, alongside Heartstopper's Kit Connor. For which she has to deliver all the classic lines and then some, live....in the original Shakespeare. She pulls a Dior notebook from her tote and opens it to reveal page after page of perfectly handwritten iambic pentameter.

"Almost," she says.

Jack, the Bleachers frontman and brain behind half of your favorite bangers, is ready too. He produced original music for the show, adding a pop-music punctuation to the intense glitter-strewn, Euphoria-esque adaptation by director Sam Gold. The high-profile musical aims to introduce new, young audiences to the centuries-old play, underscoring how relevant, how urgent its themes-love, hate, generational trauma-remain today. So, yeah, no pressure.

Luckily, Rachel is used to taking on jobs that come with a side of overwhelming responsibility. Like when Steven Spielberg chose her, then a 17-year-old responding to an open casting call, for Maria in 2021's West Side Story. Or when she entered the Hunger Games universe as protagonist Lucy Gray Baird and not only held her own against series legacy Jennifer Lawrence but also voiced original songs so well, they became actual hits (think: tens of millions of streams). And then there's playing Snow White in the much talked about - and sometimes controversial - remake, out in March.