EXCLUSIVE: Ansel Elgort & Rachel Zegler DECODE Tony & Maria's meet cute in West Side Story's Dance at the Gym

In an EXCLUSIVE chat with Pinkvilla, West Side Story co-stars Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler discuss how they established Tony and Maria's first romantic meeting amidst the thriving The Dance at the Gym sequence.

Written by Karishma Shetty , Journalist

Updated on Dec 10, 2021 | 07:10 PM IST | 444.6K

Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler play doomed lovers, Tony and Maria, in West Side Story.

Steven Spielberg's West Side Story was amongst the highly anticipated releases of this year and deservedly so! Not only was it the acclaimed Oscar-winning filmmaker's first tryst with musicals, but it also ushered in a diverse, fresh cast including newcomer Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ansel Elgort as Tony. Pinkvilla was humbled to have an EXCLUSIVE chat with Ansel and Rachel, who helped decode Tony and Maria's meet-cute amidst the most iconic, thrilling West Side Story musical number, The Dance at the Gym.

"Well, we actually filmed the meet, I say the meet-cute! We filmed the meeting underneath the bleachers first and it was on a separate set and it was just completely isolated from the incredible [The] Dance at the Gym week that we filmed so, and it was also our first scene that we shot together and it was my first day on a film set," Zegler recalled before adding, "So it was just the most adrenaline rush day of my entire life and so, to see it put together and spliced together in the film makes it seem like all the more riveting, but, in real life, it was pretty riveting to even to do it isolated from The Dance at the Gym sequence."

Chiming in, Elgort further recounted, "[The] Dance at the Gym, you're right, it's so incredible! The adrenaline, the dancing, the way the camera moves, the costumes. Yeah, on top of it, through all these moving people, we have to kind of find each other and then, somehow make it real and believable that we're both walking this way now. [Rachel nods in agreement] Okay! We're both going this way and it kind of makes sense and then, but it did feel right, and then, 'Hey! I can see you through the bleachers. I guess we're going here now and...' [chuckles]"

"Yeah, in reality, we were like 30 ft apart too! [both laugh] It was like actually very hard to find 6'4 Ansel. [laughs] [Ansel quips, "Yeah, I was the hard one, Rachel!'" [both laugh hyterically] Yeah, you were the hard one to find. I'm like 5'2 anyway," Rachel concluded.