Snow White dwarfs: Why did Disney use CGI instead of real actors in the live-action film? Explained

In 2022, Peter Dinklage criticized Disney for the new Snow White film having a backward depiction of dwarfs in it. The company responded by saying they are consulting the dwarfism community for a perfect depiction of the seven dwarfs. A couple of years later, we got the film's trailer with no real actors for the dwarfs, who are magical creatures now.

Disney thought of giving this a twist and used CGI to make the characters appear in the film. They said they would be taking "a different approach" "to avoid reinforcing stereotypes." CGI is their different approach to this and now we have seven imaginary characters given that no actor in the film's cast is portraying any dwarf.

Rachel Zegler, who plays the titular Snow White, said she sang a song, Whistle While You Work, to literally nothing, and it was "so much fun." But as we will see in the film, she will be accompanied by the CGI-based magical creatures in the film.

Rachel Zegler's Snow White is the first film to do this

CGI has been around for years, and the tales of Snow White for decades. But the Rachel Zegler film will be the first one to pull something like that. Before this, we have always seen the seven dwarfs being portrayed by actors. Though sometimes it needed some VFX makeover, but then there were always actors.

In the first adaptation of the story, which was a 1937 animated film, we saw Doc (Roy Atwell), Grumpy (Pinto Colvig), Happy (Otis Harlan), Sleepy (Pinto Colvig), Bashful (Scotty Mattraw), Sneezy (Billy Gilbert), and Dopey (Eddie Collins) being voiced by the actors.

There were always humans behind these characters working to bring them to life. That tradition has remained in the later adaptations of the original Brothers Grimm story. In the 2012 film, Mirror Mirror, where Julia Roberts played the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot is portraying the character in the 2025 Disney film), saw dwarfs' names being changed but real actors portrayed them.

We even have a couple of live-action German films based on the same story called 7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Woods (2004) and 7 Dwarves: The Forest Is Not Enough (2007). And, yes, you guessed it right, we had real actors behind the characters.

Rachel Zegler's film isn't the only movie based on the story coming this year. There's another one where Brett Cooper is playing the Snow White. Though there are no details on the cast, it is likely to cast real actors to play the dwarfs.

How did the dwarfism community respond to this?

The news that Disney is using CGI to present dwarfs in Snow White has hit hard with people having dwarfism. Among them is a bodybuilder with the same condition who spoke to the Daily Mail and expressed that this can be damaging to the careers of those with the same condition in the industry. He said,

"They wouldn’t use CGI for a tall character, so why do they have to use it for dwarfs?"

The last time dwarfs were featured in Hollywood, they weren't dwarfs but actors of average height. In the 2012 film, Snow White & the Huntsman, the dwarfs were actors with average height who were depicted small digitally. That cast included actors like Ian McShane, Nick Frost, Brian Gleeson, and more.