Zack Peter, the host of the popular pop culture podcast “No Filter,” is not impressed with celebrities who have become overly political as of late.
On social media or on big awards show stages, Hollywood stars have let viewers know where they stand on hot-button issues – whether they wanted to know or not. Peter singled out Rachel Zegler and Selena Gomez as two of the more recent vocal celebrities.
In January, Gomez posted a video to her Instagram in which she cried over the state of immigration in the U.S. Based on her next moves, including walking the Oscars red carpet in an expensive ensemble, Peter suggested her teary message was for show.
“People are kind of just tired of Hollywood telling us what we’re supposed to do,” Peter told Fox News Digital. “I think this past year has been pretty indicative of that. You know, Hollywood virtue signaling and pretending that they care about these causes. Like Selena Gomez, remember when she was just a few weeks ago crying about immigration and then two weeks after that, she’s on a red carpet dripped out in jewels and suddenly immigration is just not important to her anymore?”
“All my people are getting attacked, the children,” Gomez said through tears in the Instagram video. “I don’t understand. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something, but I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”
She deleted the message shortly afterward, before posting another, now-deleted Instagram story with a caption reading, “Apparently it’s not okay to show empathy for people.”
“So I think people just feel like it’s fake, right?” Peter said. “It’s a lot of virtue signaling. It’s a lot of pandering that I think people are just tired of. We don’t want to be lectured to.”
“Snow White” star Rachel Zegler’s own controversial social media posts were partly blamed for the underwhelming box-office performance of Disney’s remake of the 1937 animated classic the past few weeks. In the months leading up to the film’s release, Zegler posted “Free Palestine” on X, and wished on Instagram that President Donald Trump and his supporters “never know peace.”
When asked how Hollywood has reacted to Trump’s second term, Peter again questioned celebrities’ motives and whether they’re actually helping to solve the issues they’re sounding off on.
“So I think people have kind of tuned out when celebrities make their political-pandering comments on social media, unless you’re really like Rachel Zegler where you’re coming out strong with an opinion that is kind of polarizing,” he said. “I think there’s a way to share your support for something without isolating people at the same time. And so I think we need more of that. If you’re going to talk about it, at least try to make the message unifying rather than creating more political division.”
“And then when it comes to Trump specifically, I mean, I don’t know, I haven’t seen many – I think what you have like the Jane Fondas who are going to go out and use the award stage to make a comment about how woke just means empathy, but I see a lot of Hollywood doubling down on things that I think clearly just missed the mark,” he added.
JANE FONDA DEFENDS ‘WOKE’ AT SAG AWARDS, RALLIES HOLLYWOOD TO ‘RESIST’ TRUMP
While accepting her Life Achievement Award at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards, veteran actress Jane Fonda defended the word “woke” as simply meaning that one “cares.”
“What we [actors] create is empathy,” Fonda said. “Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly that we can touch their souls.”
Despite how prominent their perches are, Peter noted, liberal celebrities’ influence is clearly limited based on who won the 2024 election.
“If Hollywood had the power that it had, Kamala Harris would have been elected president,” Peter told Fox News Digital. “And we’re just seeing that people just aren’t in touch with celebrities anymore or their political statements. So I don’t think they’re really having much sway, especially with this new administration.”
