In a new interview, the leading ladies of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story address (or rather, sidestep) the sexual assault allegations against their co-star Ansel Elgort.
Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, and Rita Moreno are featured in this month’s The Hollywood Reporter cover story, where they mostly discuss Latina representation in Hollywood. The conversation eventually turned to Elgort, in the context of a conversation about West Side Story’s pivotal attempted rape scene, in which Moreno’s character stops the Jets from attacking DeBose’s Anita.
In June 2020, a woman alleged on Twitter that Elgort sexually assaulted her in 2014 when she was 17 and he was 20. From a since-deleted Twitter account, she wrote of the alleged assault, “I didn’t want to do it… the only words that came out of his mouth were ‘we need to break you in.’”
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The woman also accused Elgort of requesting nude photos and asking her to have a threesome. When the allegations surfaced, West Side Story had already finished shooting months prior. The actor, who plays Tony in the movie musical, denied the woman’s account, writing on Instagram that they had a “brief, legal, and entirely consensual relationship.” Elgort’s post has also since been deleted.
With Elgort largely absent from the West Side Story press tour, except for occasional group interviews, his co-stars have been left to address the controversy. Though the THR article insists that Zegler, DeBose, and Moreno do not shy away from discussing Elgort, their comments on the matter are quite vague.
“Nobody really knows what’s going on in anyone’s head. Only the people who were involved in that situation know what actually went down,” DeBose said. Moreno also refused to take sides, saying, “I think it would have been absolutely horrendous and wrong for anyone to take sides in that matter. It’s not for me to make those judgments.”
Zegler, who plays Elgort’s star-crossed love interest, Maria, had a slightly lengthier response. “We made a movie two and a half years ago, and a lot has gone on in the world since then,” she told THR. “A lot has changed very publicly, and privately as well. There’s been a lot of awakening. You just hope that the people involved are OK, that they are asked in a respectful manner, and that they are given the opportunity to answer for themselves.”
Spielberg, meanwhile, declined to comment on the topic.
