How Kit Connor, Rachel Zegler Created Romeo & Juliet for Gen Z With Pull-Ups and a Kiss | Teen Vogue

It was the pull-up seen all around TikTok. In Sam Gold’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, now on Broadway, Kit Connor as Shakespeare’s lovestruck teenager sprints across the stage, propelling himself up to the platform where Rachel Zegler’s Juliet pines for him from her bed. He hangs there for what feels like several minutes, desperate to get close to her. His biceps shake a little, from effort or anticipation.

“You're jonesing,” Zegler jokes, as the pair sit pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in a green room during their MOMENT by Teen Vogue cover shoot. “So overwhelmed and horny,” Connor agrees. Gold (known for Fun Home, An Enemy of the People) brainstormed the feat of arm strength when thinking about what Romeo is really after in that scene.

“He wants to get up there and have sex,” Connor says. He wasn’t able to practice it in the rehearsal room, which looked nothing like the Circle in the Square theater, known for its unique setup that places the action in the center of the room with the audience part of the show. So Connor’s first time experimenting with the move happened during tech — relatively late in the process — and he was just happy he was able to make it work. “The hang is much harder than the pull-up,” he says, “because the hang felt like I'm there for a while.”

What really sells the story of Romeo and Juliet, of course, is the chemistry, the pure passion. Both in their Broadway debuts, Zegler and Connor have it in spades, bringing to life a production that maintains the original Shakespearean language while adding a more modern playfulness in the staging, costuming, and music (handled by Jack Antonoff).

The pair had never met nor worked together before the play, but they both come fresh off productions (Heartstopper, Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) that capture distinct versions of adolescence — that time when your values are being molded and challenged, your actions begin to have consequences, and your emotions threaten to overwhelm you at every turn.

On stage, they retell a timeless story of a love that might be powerful enough to overcome hate, of the way the world’s burdens and prejudices often fall on young people to work through — and inherit their devastating consequences.

Below, Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler sit down with Teen Vogue to process their first few Romeo + Juliet shows, dissecting the fan culture that spreads videos of their performances online and the way they’ve both come of age on social media and dealt with its negative effects. But more than any noise around projects or personal lives, they’re enjoying the kinship that comes with a project like this. As Romeo + Juliet enters its 20-week run on Broadway, they’re both ready for this moment, together.

Rachel Zegler: Which were you at on Saturday?

Kit Connor: Okay. It wasn't that bad. Yeah, it wasn't bad.

Zegler: We had a great crowd for a matinee. That was our first matinee ever, so we were kind of shaking in our boots a little bit. And our director wasn't there. It was kind of one of those things where it was like, "Dad's not home. Dad's not home. We can have a party."

Zegler: Kit Connor. I know our audience.

Connor: [Looks to Zegler] My first impression of you? Well, we met in Cosmic Diner on 8th and 52nd. I was running maybe two minutes late and I was kind of slightly… not nervous, but I was apprehensive going into it. I was like, it is just going to be a big thing.

Zegler: We'd already said yes. That was the thing. Whether we like each other or not, it has to happen.

Connor: I hadn't even met Sam [Gold] yet in person, so I was like, I got to meet the two of you and it was just like, she seems lovely. She seems really excited. I was already a fan of her work. I'd already seen her in West Side Story and like most people who saw that film, I thought she was kind of magical, so it was pretty nice. Meet your heroes. That's what they say.

Zegler: Print that please, so I can frame it. No, it was very similar. There is always a bit of apprehension, especially when you're going to meet somebody that you've already agreed to do 20 weeks of Broadway with. I was very aware of him because I had seen the beautiful scene from Heartstopper that he had done with Olivia Colman and knew that this child could emote. You were such a baby in that clip, and then a man showed up at the diner and I was like, who is this grown man?

But I had also known that you were about to work with [Noah Centineo and] so many of my friends on Warfare and those friends of mine are excellent judges of character. I knew that you wouldn't be working with them if you weren't also very up to the task and kind and wonderful. And you are all of those things.

Connor: Thank you. That's very kind of you.

Zegler: Meet your heroes.

Zegler: The culture really does come into play with Maria a lot more, but it is still my body. So I think that the culture kind of carries over and [my costars] Gían [Pérez], Sola [Fadiran], and I always joke about the fact that the Capulets are very Latino-coded with the, “You should marry this boy, he's really, really nice. I vetted him for you.” Sola is Nigerian and has Nigerian family and talks about the immigrant family dynamic being very prevalent in the Capulet story.

Also, Juliet's younger. Maria was 18, Juliet is 13 years old. That was also a conversation with Sam where I'm like, okay, so how 13 are we playing her? I think the takeaway really is that teenagers are older than they used to be. Teenagers are on TikTok using Drunk Elephant skin care. It is so beyond. When I was 13 I didn't really have a phone.

Zegler: During our invited dress [rehearsal] was when Kit did the famed pull-up in the balcony scene.

Connor: I had done it once before in tech.

Zegler: But we hadn't run it.

Connor: We hadn't run it.

Zegler: So it happened and then everybody was clapping, but we had not staged to kiss in the balcony scene. It just wasn't a thing that was supposed to happen. It's not scripted in the original text either. The whole point is that he never really gets to her and that's the beauty of the scene. But he had figured out a way to get to me, and I immediately went backstage after the balcony scene, crossed paths with you — we check in with each other after that because you have fans and a sweat rag.

Connor: I get really hot. I run hot.

Zegler: So we checked in, and then I immediately grabbed my phone and I texted Sam, our director, and I was like, “We need to kiss in the balcony scene.” And he said, “Done and done.” I wasn't going to do it if we hadn't talked about it first. That's rule number one of intimacy coordination.

Connor: Especially in front of...

Zegler: Like 600 people. So by the first preview, that kiss was in there. I feel like that's the biggest adjustment. We used to have a song at the end of the show that got cut after the second preview, because at the first preview, everybody clapped so hard at the final couplet of "Never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo." They all clapped and then we couldn't hear the start of the song, so we were just like, “F*ck it, let's bow.” The ending was too strong as it already was… We've started making line cuts because we're trying to shave down the runtime, and that's a journey.

Connor: Ruthless cuts.

Zegler: Which I will debrief and text him being like, I miss this line.

Connor: The best thing about previews is that you get to see what works and what doesn't.

Zegler: Look, we are really glad people are excited. That is an amazing feeling to have so many people who are young and excited about Shakespeare. It's so cool. But we're in an era right now, maybe not when this runs, but we're in an era as of today where we're still experimenting and exploring. To see choices we made so early on in the run, when things are still changing, be immortalized forever… It's true, what they say about the internet. As much as our production is lovely and trying to take things down, somebody screen recorded it. It's on somebody's phone. It'll just keep going up until we die.

Connor: That's the thing. The run hasn't even really started yet.

Zegler: And we're not locked in. It was still in rehearsals. The show hasn't frozen yet, which means the show isn't the show. That is, I think, the thing. We know that that kind of stuff is going to happen, and that's okay. But also we have intimate scenes that are...

Connor: We have certain scenes that are kind of extra vulnerable.

Zegler: That's kind of the thing that you really go, “I don't know about that.” It's our Broadway debut, it's awesome that people are there and raring to go, but it still is a Broadway show. We abide by Broadway show rules even if we're not like every other Broadway show on Broadway right now.

Connor: With a play like Romeo and Juliet where everyone knows what's going to happen, we're desperately trying to keep the audience on their toes and stay two steps ahead and keep the audience surprised and things like that make it a little bit harder to do that, and that's the nature of it, unfortunately. We're hoping that it won't have any kind of impact on how people react to the show and how people experience the show because I think it's a very charged show. There's a lot of emotional charge, physical charge, sexual charge. There's a lot of energy and we want people to feel that and not feel like they've seen it before.

Zegler: Also to just be there with us because this [gesturing to her phone] really takes you out of something. It's an interesting thing with how, even just growing up and growing into this career and the notoriety that comes with it, that all of a sudden, all of your interactions with people look like this [holds up phone] while they're talking to you. Knowing now that people are also doing that when we're giving 110% of ourselves on stage every night, it's tough. We want you to be in the room with us, and luckily it hasn't felt like they're not in the room with us, but that kind of subconscious knowledge can be a little bit detrimental.

Zegler: My girl.

Connor: I learnt my lesson to a certain extent — not that I think I had really any fault in it, but I do think that I learnt that social media isn't really for me and it's not really where I feel safe and where I feel most comfortable. Sometimes as an actor, you have to have social media to [promote your work]. But for me, I think I realized that I like to keep my distance a little bit. I also like my privacy. I like my personal space. I like to be able to do things that human beings do. For the most part I can.

Some people are much more well suited to [fame], I am a bit more introverted. I always like to say that if it ever became not worth doing the job that I love, then I would stop doing it. There is always a silver lining, but it doesn't make the things that you have to experience any less horrible or any less sh*t, basically.

Zegler: Totally. I feel like you become stripped of your humanity a bit because you are seen as a product or an object of people's affection, hatred, obsession. That can have, like Kit said, some good sides and some bad sides. I've mostly seen the bad of it. I've been doxxed. I've had people outside my apartment, I've had people protesting my existence and the color of my skin. I don't f*ck with it anymore. I really don't.

That is such a hard boundary to draw because my career started on social media. I was a YouTuber before anybody wanted to pay me to act or sing. I have a deep love for the connections it brought me, the friendships that I maintain. But there is a real downside. People can say it's a double-edged sword, but I think there's mostly negative aspects of it than there are positives.

Connor: I agree.

Zegler: At least once you reach a certain point, because the second one loses their anonymity, they lose everything that comes with it, and that is comfort. I made a vow to myself after last summer where everything was really horrible for me online, that I would not spend a single second being uncomfortable that I didn't have to… I wish I had the wherewithal to say it the way Chappell did. I think she's brilliant. I think the people who are mad at her are idiots who simply don't know what it's like to not have an ounce of privacy anymore.

And so therefore, like Kit said, the second it's not worth what comes with it, I'm gone. But I'm off Twitter. F*ck Twitter. It can be a nasty place. I saw what it did to [Kit]. I know what it did to me. I've seen women in particular be torn down my entire life. Jameela Jamil, why? Taylor Swift, why? Jennifer Lawrence, why? Anne Hathaway, why? Halle Bailey, why? And I know why, but the general public will never learn… now they've moved on to Chappell. F*ck them.

Zegler: She was awesome.

Connor: This is sh*t.

Zegler: Even that girl who was sobbing in the parking lot of the Eras tour. Do you remember? Random ass people, and all of a sudden there's a hate train against you.

Connor: I have this thing where it's like... I'm British—

Zegler: Wait, what?

Connor: —we have a culture of taking the piss out of each other. We have a culture of sarcasm.

Zegler: It's true.

Connor: Rachel knows my way of showing love is being mean. Even with that being the way that my brain is wired, I just don't understand the way that social media seems to... People seem to feel encouraged by social media to be cruel, and to point out everyone's flaws. It feels like people are so desensitized to humanity and being rational and rational thinking, so people just want to form an opinion and put it out as quickly as possible without thinking about it.

Zegler: Because they can hide behind not having a face or a name that is accurate to them. It gives them what they think is power, but is really just cowardice.

Connor: It's really something that I have a real thing about in terms of, I don't care what the public perception of someone is based on social media, because I know based on friends, loved ones that it doesn't ever mean anything.

Connor: When I was doing Heartstopper, I knew so many people who had worked on Snow White, crew members, and they only ever sung Rachel's praises. It was like she was an angel that they'd worked with. That was my only knowledge of her. The real thing for me is the people that I trust and love are the people I care about.

Zegler: [Zegler starts to get teary] I love that crew. That crew is awesome, by the way. I didn't know that.

Connor: That's the thing, [social media] is just not real. None of it's real. No one knows anything based [off of] social media.

Zegler: Noah [Centineo] had it. Noah went through it.

Connor: I know so many people who have gone through these things and some on bigger platforms, smaller platforms, bigger scales, some with things that are just disgusting. These people, a lot of them I would die for, I genuinely love these people — there is no reflection of them in the things that people say about them. Genuinely, it's one of those things that makes me really upset. It makes me really angry because I don't like people talking about things they don't know.

Zegler: Why is Taylor Swift XYZ? You don't know her. It's so [wild] that you're talking like that, because you don't know her. I don't know her, and that's why I'm not on the internet going, "But actually, I think that she's actually conniving in this and her relationship isn't real." You don't know this person. Spend your time learning a craft. Touch some grass. Kiss a girl, do something.

Zegler: Great movie. It's an awesome movie.

Zegler: I was just on the phone with her the other day.

Zegler: We were texting. My friend Dujonna Gift from Snow White is very good friends with her and I just shot her a DM saying, "Hey, I think you're the greatest." She responded and vocalized her thanks for people who stood up for her in the time where everybody was tearing her down. I think she was failed by the people around her. You need to protect people when you make a vow to cast them in something where you know— you can't act stupid, you know how the general public is going to act because they've been acting that way for years.

Connor: And even if you are naive enough to think that that won't happen, then when it does, react.

Zegler: Then when it does, you need to f*cking say something. You need to move quickly and make sure that she is protected. I've never seen such heinous things said about a person before than [I did about] her. It took absolutely nothing out of me to shoot out a tweet saying that she was my Juliet.

Look, I could wax poetic about how much I think she's one of the most talented young actresses working in London theater, how excited I am for her career, but all it takes is one word of kindness. And she was extremely thankful, and that is very beautiful of her. But it took absolutely nothing out of me, and I told her not to thank me for that. It is basic human decency and basic kindness. She got such rave reviews in that for a reason. She's a f*cking titan. I love her dearly, and I can't wait to see the things she does.

Zegler: We were thrust into it, weren't we? With movement stuff with Sonia Taye on the first day. She was just like, throw yourself on the ground, and now grind on each other.

Connor: There's a lot of grinding. I think chemistry wise, we naturally just all started to get on really well.

Zegler: We would have lunch together every day. We were working in Brooklyn at the rehearsal studio. We'd all go to Whole Foods and get our lunch and come back and eat together. And it was just the bits, the bits began. We love the bits.

Connor: Me and Taheen [Modak].

Zegler: Well, the British sense of humor. There's a bromance there.

Connor: Taheen plays Benvolio. We have incredible chemistry on stage, much better than mine and Rachel’s.

Zegler: Okay.

Connor: It's fantastic. I think most of the audience is begging me to kiss him.

Zegler. I mean, canon.

Connor: Has it been circulating?

Zegler: Explain what's happening [in the scene].

Connor: It's a scene at the end of episode two, in which I reveal the fact that Charlie has an eating disorder.

Zegler: Oh wow.

Connor: Hayley did really beautifully in that scene. Really. That was a hard scene to film because we had an hour to shoot it. And it's not short. I was really worried about it to be honest… But I'm glad that people like it. I tried to watch it and I was like, I'm not very good in this scene.

Zegler: [To me] See what I have to deal with?

Zegler: I really value quiet [and] the time I get at home with the dog, with friends, and with people I love. I value those moments because they're few and far between. Those moments between jobs are so wonderful, but also the work is really about the people that you're with. It becomes defined by the people that you're with, not necessarily what you're doing or how you're doing in it, or how it's received, how it's reviewed, if it's awarded. It doesn't matter. It's really the people that you do it with. I have accumulated such a wonderful community of friends from the jobs that I've done and it's really for me because the past five years have been really tough… I have found so much [more] comfort in the silence than I have in the noise.

Connor: I would say a similar thing in that I think I've learned to appreciate the things that matter and the opinions that matter. Heartstopper came out when I still kind of hadn't finished puberty. I wasn't done yet. I wasn't fully cooked. People had never looked at me in the way that they started looking at me. And I had never led a show before. I'd never led a project really before. I was a child actor. No one was like, that's a good performance. It's like, oh yeah, he's a kid. He did all right. He said the lines. He got them out. I cared a lot about the opinions of strangers and that's a dangerous place to be.

I think now I've come to a point where if someone that I know or respect, really respect, has given me a compliment or criticism, that's what I care about. But if someone says something on the internet, it hurts sometimes. It's really f*cking annoying. But they hold a lot less weight to me now, which is good.

Zegler: I have two movies coming out while we're [doing the show], Y2K and then Spellbound coming out on Netflix as well. So it's kind of that balance, but also setting the boundary of being like, I'm not doing press for that. I'm sorry. This show matters so much. I don't want to take any shows off. I just want to be there for everything all the time and feel it all. Then after this we jump onto Snow White and that will bring what it brings and it'll be out in the world. I'm excited for that.

Connor: I can't wait for Warfare to come out. I really can't. It was one of the best jobs I've ever done. It was two months of my life that I wish I could relive again and again and again. I made some of my best friends ever on a job. I think it has the potential to be amazing.

Zegler: I'm going to force Noah [Centineo] to make me his date to the premiere, I'll be there, whether you like it or not.

Connor: What about me? You can be my date to the f*cking premiere.

Zegler: I didn't think I could—

Connor: You have two friends in that f*cking film.

Zegler: I have more than two. Michael [Gandolfini].

Connor: Michael doesn't like you.

Zegler: Michael doesn't like you. Can I be your date to the premiere?

Connor: Well you said Noah, so pick f*cking Noah. Anyway, but yeah...

Zegler: After this interview we are no longer friends.

Zegler: It's everything I've ever wanted. It's good people, it's good work. I've always wanted to be on Broadway, so it's a nice little cocktail… I'm so sorry for crying so much.

Connor: It's disgusting.

Zegler: I'm sorry.

Connor: No, but I do have this thing of I'm so happy to be here and do this job and I love it so much. I love the play and I love everyone involved and I feel very lucky to be able to do it. But I think this is her moment in all honesty. I mean that.

Zegler: Oh my God, I can't do this today. I cry eight times a week.

Connor: I think it's very special to be able to be here, be able to see it and [to] be a part of that moment is pretty cool. But yeah, it's hers. I lay no claim to it.

Zegler: I am deeply, deeply thankful to be finally telling this story with someone who cares and loves and is as lovely as he presents. It's really, really, really, wonderful and powerful to be respected and loved — if I may be so bold as to say that you love and respect me [Laughs] — by somebody that I also love and respect and feel so held by. It's a two-hander.

The name of the play is apt and we hold each other through it. I'm really, really thankful because people like [that] in this industry are really hard to come by. I feel really lucky that in my last three jobs, you, Tom Blyth [The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes], and Andrew Burnap [Snow White] — I have just been so taken care of by my male leads. I love you.

Connor: Love you too.

Photographer Evelyn Freja

1st Assistant Sam Schmieg

2nd Assistant Rita Iovine

Design Director Emily Zirimis

Designer / Production Liz Coulbourn

Associate Visuals Editor / Production Lead Bea Oyster

Custom Backdrop Maisie Sattler

Retoucher Alberto Maro

Grooming for Kit Connor Courtesy of Melissa DeZarate

Styling for Kit Connor Courtesy of Felicity Kay

Hair for Rachel Zegler Courtesy of David Von Cannon

Makeup for Rachel Zegler Courtesy of Kale Teter

Styling for Rachel Zegler Courtesy of Sarah Slutsky Tooley

Editor-in-Chief Versha Sharma

Executive Editor Danielle Kwateng

Features Director Brittney McNamara

Talent Director Eugene Shevertalov

Associate Culture Director P. Claire Dodson

Culture Editor Kaitlyn McNab

Social Video Director/Producer Ali Farooqui

Contributing Editor Alyssa Hardy

Associate Director of Audience Development & Analytics Mandy Velez Tatti

Senior Social Media Manager Honestine Fraser