Ariana DeBose of West Side Story Had a 'Full-Fledged Panic Attack' Before Meeting Rita Moreno On Set
It can be intimidating to meet your heroes.
It can be even more intimidating - as actresses Ariana DeBose and Rachel Zegler learned - to meet your whole community's heroes. So when legendary actress Rita Moreno of the original West Side Story finally arrived on the set of Steven Spielberg's recent remake, needless to say, emotions were running high.
Moreno first asked to meet the young woman playing Anita - her own role in the 1961 classic. But, as DeBose explained,
"I was having a full-fledged panic attack. I hid underneath the bleachers for like 20 minutes until I could get myself together."
While Moreno gave her successor a chance to calm down, Moreno met Rachel Zegler - who had formerly been just another high school student - and her mother, instead. Zegler recounted her mother bursting into tears within the first few minutes of the conversation, after Moreno did the catchphrase from the 70s educational series The Electric Company - the show that had taught her to speak English.
Of course, that wasn't before she gave the 18-year-old Zegler a compliment she was not entirely prepared for:
"Oh, your voice is so lovely, I shit a brick!"
"It was the craziest compliment I've ever gotten, and then my mom's crying, and then I look and Ariana's hiding in the corner."
When DeBose was eventually able to collect herself enough to go over and meet Moreno, and the veteran took her younger counterpart under her wing immediately.
"She calmed me down and gave me the space to feel my feelings. She was like, 'It's OK. It's a lot...You passed the audition. You got the part. There's a reason for that."
Now, three years later, the three women - who are looking at an awards season rife with potential wins for them and their movie - are thick as thieves, and likely will be for a long time. Moreno has cemented herself as a valuable mentor for these younger actresses, in a way passing the torch to them. Spielberg put it best when he talked about her role on the set:
"Rita was at once omnipresent and also incredibly generous with the cast... We had 50 actors who were appearing in their first film ever, so the daily mentorship she provided is hard to overstate."
You can watch the new West Side Story in theaters now - but if you want the full theatrical experience, you'd better do it fast, because it will likely move to streaming soon.
