At the dawn of 2023, Zachary Levi was riding high.
Following a five-year run as the titular star of the NBC spy caper “Chuck,” the actor positioned himself as a legit leading man in film thanks to the breakout success of “Shazam!” The DC tentpole was a low-risk proposition for Warner Bros. that delivered strong reviews and a $368 million global box office haul against a $90 million budget. But in the run-up to the sequel that year, Levi ignited a furor when he weighed in vaguely on the COVID vaccine debate. In response to a Twitter user who asked, “Do you agree or not that Pfizer is a real danger to the world?” Levi wrote, “Hardcore agree.”
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It was the kind of vaccine skepticism that had already dinged the career prospects of fellow superhero stars Letitia Wright and Evangeline Lilly, but Levi doubled down. The following year, he endorsed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a reviled figure in Hollywood for stoking fears about vaccine schedules and COVID boosters. When Kennedy ended his bid to be the Democratic Party nominee and urged his supporters to pivot to Donald Trump, Levi was dubious. After a heart-to-heart with Kennedy, he decided to throw his weight behind the man most loathed by his showbiz brethren.
For the TV actor who began to stumble as a movie star with such duds as last year’s “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” his timing for going rogue wasn’t optimal. But the wildly ambitious Levi has even bigger plans than securing a spot on the A-list. He’s about to embark on a risky plan to launch a Hollywood studio in Austin, Texas — incidentally, a mecca for entertainment industry foes of the jab like Joe Rogan and Woody Harrelson. While Rogan is untouchable as Spotify’s golden goose podcaster and Harrelson gets a pass because he only strays from Hollywood orthodoxy on the vaccine issue, Levi is particularly vulnerable; his career was already cooling before he spoke out. And soon, he will have another mouth to feed. As we meet at a Brentwood café in March, Levi is days away from becoming a father for the first time. He has just finished prepping for a home birth at the Ventura, California, abode he shares with his partner, photographer Maggie Keating.
“I know that there are people that would prefer not to work with me now because of my opinions. My team has let me know,” he says as he nods in the direction of Beverly Hills, where his agents at UTA are headquartered. “They haven’t given me any specific names, but there are people who prefer not to work with me at this time. And it’s unfortunate. I knew that was probably going to happen. I didn’t make this decision blindly or casually.”
Still, his MAHA-friendly turn could be well timed after all. Post-2024 election, the world is newly aware of the rising tide of oddly heterodox people. And if all breaks Levi’s way, his plans for the future could resonate far beyond Texas. Either way, his status as persona non grata in Hollywood hardly matters to him. The town is bleeding amid runaway production, audience apathy and a widening gap between the 1% and the industry’s rank and file. Given that bleak outlook, Levi says, in characteristically impolitic terms, that he’d rather opt out. “AI is about to be the nail in the coffin,” he notes. “And we wonder why L.A. has become the Detroit of the entertainment industry.”
As Levi takes a sip from a glass of pink sludge and digs into a plate of organic eggs, the 44-year-old actor is in the thick of a $40 million capital raise to begin building a $100 million full-service campus in Austin for his Wyldwood Studios, a place that would certainly benefit if Trump follows through on his promise to levy 100% tariffs on producers who shoot abroad. Likewise, the Texas Senate has proposed injecting half a billion dollars into film production thanks to efforts made by Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey and Taylor Sheridan. (The bill was introduced by a Republican senator.) Levi envisions a complex with a pair of 20,000-square-foot soundstages, two amphitheaters, a boutique hotel, cabins and a farm-to-table restaurant. He bought the 75 acres along the banks of the Colorado River long before he ran afoul of Hollywood convention.
“Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and all those O.G.s knew it over 100 years ago. Hollywood was broken then, and we needed a better system,” he says of the silent-era legends who founded United Artists to bypass oppressive studio contracts. “This industry is crumbling around us. In order for us to survive, we need to have a space for artists that will foster certified organic human-made content.”
Speaking with an intensity that belies the hippie-speak, Levi is still more of an Aaron Rodgers than a Roger Stone. In fact, the 6’3” Ventura native who loves to sing (remember his “I See the Light” duet with Mandy Moore in “Tangled”?) and talk about his “plant medicine journeys” isn’t exactly a MAGA prototype. In 2020, he cast his ballot for Marianne Williamson in the Democratic presidential primary. In 2016, he voted for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and urged his social media followers to not pull the lever for Trump because he didn’t care “about anything but power.”
“I was not a fan of Trump’s Trumpiness,” he explains of the man he’s never met. “I didn’t like a lot of these personal things, the ways that he carries himself a lot of the time. I understand people’s aversion. Do I think the whole package is somehow perfect? No. In fact, most people who voted for Donald Trump recognize a lot of the imperfections in all of it. Nobody was saying, ‘This is the Orange Messiah.’”
Levi has a different Messiah; he describes himself as a nondenominational Christian and devout at that. For those expecting Wyldwood to churn out conservative-minded fare like The Daily Wire is doing from Nashville, think again. Levi says that he is aiming for content closer to “The White Lotus” than “The Chosen.” Aspects of his values fit neatly into Hollywood: When asked why he once spoke out against gay bullying at an Anti-Defamation League awards ceremony, he explains: “I have conservative views, and I have more liberal views. And one of my more liberal views is that particularly growing up in the arts, I’ve had gay friends my entire life, and I’ve never, even within my spirituality, seen it as this thing that we need to be fearful of or scorn or bully or anything. I love my gay friends, my gay community. Jesus wouldn’t bully somebody online or otherwise because they’re gay.”
Although he sees flaws in Trump and has certain left-coded leanings, Levi seems to have alienated a large swath of the industry. But he’s open to the idea that he’s wrong about all manner of things. “It’s great hubris and folly to think that you are incapable of being bamboozled,” he says. “We are all capable of being bamboozled. I could be getting bamboozled right now, putting my trust into leaders that I helped to get elected.”
For a self-described Hollywood pariah, Levi has plenty of backers.
“He’s just an incredibly passionate person. He’s really smart. He has great instincts,” says “Chuck” co-creator Josh Schwartz, who has remained friends with Levi since the series wrapped in 2012. “He’s really entrepreneurial, in terms of looking towards the future. I’m not even entirely sure what’s going on in Texas, but I know he’s thinking about the future of the industry, especially in the face of these technological uncertainties.”
Director Guy Moshe was working with Levi on the upcoming thriller “Hotel Tehran” as his star faced growing criticism for his COVID vaccine views.
“To me it was a very brave thing he was doing. And I said that to him when we were filming. And Isaw what he was going through. Obviously, you can imagine there’s a lot of voices in your head when you’re in Hollywood in his position. And for the record, I’ve taken the vaccine, as have mykids,” Moshe recalls. “He is like a disrupter in a way. He’s talking about a lot of things. He’s talking about AI, health, politics, Hollywood. And he is challenging us to engage in a meaningful and thoughtful conversation about these subjects as opposed to having an automatic for or against response. We used to applaud this back in the day.”
Others feel conflicted about their relationship with Levi. Robert Duncan McNeill, who directed some 20 episodes of “Chuck,” has maintained a close friendship with Levi even though their politics are seemingly at odds. McNeill, who dubs himself left-wing and sees Trump as a major threat to democracy, sometimes wrestles with the dichotomy.
“I love Zach dearly, but I don’t want in any way for our friendship and my feelings about him as a human to be an endorsement of his politics because I vehemently disagree with them,” McNeill says. “But he’s an unusual friend in my life. He sometimes can be more of a bleeding-heart liberal than I am, which shocks me. Zach walks the walk in a lot of ways better than me.”
Not all of his former colleagues feel warm and fuzzy about Levi — namely Laura Benanti, who starred opposite him in 2016 on Broadway in “She Loves Me.” When their fellow cast member Gavin Creel died in September of a rare type of cancer at the age of 48, Levi suggested in an Instagram post that COVID vaccines could have played a role. That prompted Benanti to lash out. “I never liked him,” she said of Levi in a podcast interview.
And though his “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” co-star Rachel Zegler didn’t name Levi, she posted on Instagram after the election: “May Trump supporters … never know peace.” That doesn’t change his feelings about her.
“I am one of those people, obviously,” he says, referring to his own vote for Trump. “But I think that we have got to recognize that a lot of times people’s decisions are predicated upon the bad information that they’re being fed on a regular basis. So should I hate her because she’s downstream of all of these voices that are telling her that he’s Hitler and the people who vote for him are Nazis? She’s a really talented girl, and I do think that she wants the best for the world deep down.”
After all, filming both “Shazam!” movies was joyful, and Levi is still talking about his “Shazamily.” But a changing of the DC guard from Walter Hamada to James Gunn and Peter Safran meant that the previous regime’s titles were dumped into the marketplace in 2023 with little marketing. That slate included “The Flash,” “Blue Beetle,” “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” and the “Shazam!” sequel. They all underperformed. “Fury of the Gods” pulled in just $134 million off a $110 million budget. When a reporter asked Gunn about Levi’s Pfizer post, the DC chief responded: “Actors and filmmakers that I work with are going to say things that I agree with and things that I don’t agree with. And that’s going to happen. I don’t have a list of things that somebody should say because of what I think. And you know, I can’t be changing my plans all the time because an actor says something that I don’t agree with.” Still, Levi isn’t bitter and blames the reporter for trying to use Gunn to publicly shame him.
“I’ve known James for a really long time, and I believe that he was doing what he needed to do in order to answer those questions to the best of his ability,” he says. “I didn’t feel like he threw me under a bus or anything. I think that James was answering honestly, according to how he feels, as he should.”
As for whether or not he would come back for a third outing, Levi is emphatic: “Absolutely. I loved playing the role.” But are there any plans? “No idea. It’s all well above my pay grade,” he insists.
And though many of his closest industry friends hail from the “Chuck” days, playing the nerdy American Bond took its toll.
“It was gnarly. It really broke me in a lot of ways physically and mentally and emotionally,” he says. “We were averaging like 16 hours a day the first season. Sitcom is the best schedule in the world for an actor. I mean, you barely have to work. It’s fantastic. But single-camera or episodic television is really the most grueling schedule in all of Hollywood as far as I’m concerned.”
The “Chuck” grind also prevented him from beginning his superhero career even earlier. Back in 2009, Kenneth Branagh cast Levi as the charismatic warrior Fandral in “Thor.” Then NBC ordered six additional episodes of “Chuck,” and his schedule would no longer permit the “Thor” production. (He wound up playing Fandral in the next two “Thor” outings.) In hindsight, he thinks NBC could have made the scheduling work.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he says. “I think that Hollywood is so capable when they really want to figure things out; when they see the value in someone, then they will.”
Ultimately, the “Chuck” positives — the ongoing (but sometimes complicated) friendships — outweighed the negatives. There’s also the fandom, which Levi says has only grown since the series’ initial window on broadcast TV as it finds new devotees on streaming.
“There are fans who have followed me through my entire career,” he says, “fans who show up for conventions and events and have been pleading for more ‘Chuck,’ more of a ‘Chuck’ series or a ‘Chuck’ movie, which I’ve been trying to make since before we even finished the series because I think it’s worthy.”
In some ways, the “Chuck” experience helped crystallize his plans for Wyldwood. While promoting the series in the U.K., he caught a glimpse of a more sustainable work culture.
“It was like where every couple hours we’re stopping for a tea, and the day was manageable and there wasn’t as much stress,” he remembers. “And I was so conditioned to the American thing. I’m like, ‘Tick-tock, guys, what are we doing?’”
Things will be different at Wyldwood, he insists, with “8- to 10-hour days. And if we need to shoot two more weeks in order to make up those hours, then we’ll shoot two more weeks and figure it out in the budget.”
Even before he became a father, he began to see the necessity of having a work-life balance. A few weeks after our café meeting, we reconnect over Zoom. Levi is now officially a father to Henson Ezra Levi Pugh. “Ten fingers and 10 toes and just really strong and aware right out of the gate. A dreamy little boy,” he says.
During our meeting in Brentwood, Levi talks about not wanting to pass his own unhealed trauma on to his son, “which is what happened with my parents and their parents and their parents before them.” (His parents divorced when he was 6 years old.) And that is the impetus for a Wyldwood setup that will encourage cast and crew to keep their own family units intact during productions — not exactly the norm in the industry. As early adopters, the Levi family will remain in Ventura until July and then head to Texas to raise Henson. But Levi will keep a foot in Los Angeles and is confident that he will continue to work in the Hollywood system as he pursues his Wyldwood vision. For one thing, he says there are plenty of industry figures who voted for Trump for various reasons.
“I know it to be true because I’ve gotten messages from lots of people who I won’t name but who were very grateful to me for taking the stand that I took,” he says. “And also they would tell me, ‘I want to do that, but I’m so afraid.’ And I would tell them, ‘Listen, you’re on your journey. I’m on my journey. You’ve got to keep trusting God. And if you feel compelled to step out in that way, then do it boldly and know that you’re going to be OK. And if you don’t feel that conviction yet, then don’t. It’s all good.’”
For another thing, there are some executives who, whatever their own politics, are willing to work with talent they once believed were reckless about COVID measures. Wright, for instance, is mounting a comeback and recently made her directorial debut with the short “Highway to the Moon.” Levi believes she never should have endured the town’s cold shoulder. “I really have a lot of respect for her,” he says. “They tried to smear Letitia [after she questioned the COVID vaccine], and then of course they go, ‘And she’s a Christian — of course she’s wacky.’” Although Lilly says she is stepping away from acting, Dennis Quaid, who stumped for Trump, is working steadily. And Ice Cube, who poohed-poohed the vaccine during an interview with Tucker Carlson, just got hired by Warner Bros. to write and star in a new “Friday” movie.
“While there are some people who might prefer not to work with me anymore, there’s a lot of people on that side of the political spectrum who are even more inclined to hire me and to want to do business with me because ‘I need some people who voted another way,’” Levi says and then pauses, thinking of recent conversations with decision-makers. “They see that what I did was at great risk. And they were like, ‘You know what? I give you a lot of props for that because that’s not an easy thing to do.’ And I go, ‘I appreciate that.’”
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The post The Trump-Voting ‘Shazam!’ Star on Feeling Hollywood’s Wrath Over Vaccine Skepticism and the $100 Million Studio He’s Building in Austin appeared first on Variety.
