Why Zachary Levi, libertarian superhero, is the most interesting actor in Hollywood

It’s proved a rocky road but actor, practising Christian and Jordan Peterson admirer Zachary Levi has finally hit his purple patch. Unfortunately for Levi – a rare Hollywood figure with (vaguely) conservative leanings – “purple” in this case refers not to the state of his career but the colour of the magical writing implement he wields in the new kids’ movie Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Levi plays the titular Harold, whom the film’s Wikipedia entry succinctly describes as “a man who has had a magical purple crayon since his childhood which makes whatever he draws come to life”. The Purple Crayon, adapted from the 1995 bestselling children’s book by Crockett Johnson, is not The Godfather – Part 1. It isn’t even The Godfather – Part 3. But Levi nonetheless appears to have jumped at the opportunity to portray what is essentially the Hollywood version of a CBeebies presenter. The star of DC’s flop Shazam! franchise may well be counting his blessings that he still has any career whatsoever.

With his bright, bouncy screen presence, Levi makes for an unlikely figure of controversy. Yet behind the effusive persona is an actor who has flirted with cancellation more times than Robert Downey Jr. has taken delivery of a bin-lorry full of cash from Marvel.

He’s accused Hollywood of pushing “garbage” on audiences and has taken digs on Instagram at Dwayne Johnson (before it was fashionable). A self-described libertarian, he has also tweeted that he was in “hardcore” agreement that Covid vaccine maker Pfizer “is a real danger to the world”. He’s even made statements that social media deemed supportive of Donald Trump. It’s amazing that we can hear him deliver his lines in Harold and the Purple Crayon over the sound of sharpening pitchforks.

Levi has gone on to break the unofficial Hollywood rule that actors should publicly feign indifference towards the success or failure of their films. He did so when the 2023 Shazam! sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods crashed at multiplexes, and Levi took to Instagram to attack “insanely unkind” critics for dissing it.

But he isn’t simply a crank or a candidate for cancellation. Levi is one of those rare Hollywood creatures who, just like people in the real world, is full of contradictions. Amid his outbursts, he has been an advocate for mental health and has spoken movingly about his struggles to overcome an emotionally abusive childhood and to repair his relationship with his mother prior to her death. In a town where everyone is watching what they say all the time, he appears to not have a filter.

Levi grew up in Ventura, a well-to-do suburb of Los Angeles. After a number of smaller roles as a child actor on stage, he broke through in the espionage comedy series Chuck, which ran between 2007-2012, starring opposite Yvonne Strahovksi as a schlubby every-dude who embarks on a surprise career as a super-spy. Chuck showcased his puppyish energy and his ability to sell jokes through sheer enthusiasm. But already, there were signs that he wasn’t just another likeable lunk.

One early flashpoint concerned his Christianity (the actor is often assumed to be Jewish, but “Levi” is, in fact, his middle name – his full name is Zachary Levi Pugh). While never denying he was a church-goer, he said that he did not feel Hollywood was a place where he could speak freely about his beliefs.

“People don’t talk about religion a lot in Hollywood because it’s not an incredibly safe place to do it,” he told GQ while promoting Chuck in 2010. There are a lot of people who want to go toe-to-toe with a Christian just for being a Christian.”

That wasn’t his only unorthodox opinion. In a 2016 Maxim interview, he expressed frustration at what he described as the “death of chivalry” – a view regarded as a swipe at feminism. “It’s so fascinating, girls say chivalry is dead. And it’s like if it’s dead, you f______ killed it. Because it used to be a guy could be a guy and a girl wouldn’t be offended if he got the door or something, and now it’s like ‘I can get the door for myself; I’m a strong woman,’ and then it’s like ‘F___! I don’t know anymore.’”

Then there was his 2018 tweet in which he disagreed with a follower on the site who said “white men” could not speak out about racism and sexism. “Saying that men can’t lead meaningful conversations about sexism and that white people can’t lead meaningful conversations about racism is both sexist and racist,” he wrote. “Truth doesn’t care about privilege, nor do those who seek it.” Given the current political climate in the US, it was as if he was going out of his way to be cancelled.

Chuck was a cult show, but ratings were mediocre, and it took a fan campaign to save it several seasons in. It was cancelled for good in 2012. Levi next worked on Broadway (earning a Tony nomination for a revival of 1963 musical She Loves Me), cameoed in the Thor movies as sidekick Fandral (one of the “Warriors Three”) and played Rachel Brosnahan’s love interest in Prime Video’s The Marvellous Ms Maisel.

Even as he bounced between parts, he was working through his complicated feelings about his mother, with whom he did not speak for the final 13 years of her life. He talked about their relationship, and his struggle with the emotional abuse he experienced as a child, in his 2022 self-published memoir, Radical Love: Learning To Accept Yourself and Others. Far rawer than a typical celebrity self-help manual, the book openly discussed Levi’s suicidal thoughts and the three weeks he spent in a mental health facility in Connecticut after suffering a “whole big fun breakdown.”

“You gotta get the story out, and then you gotta also be like, ‘Okay, what do we do with that?’” he told USA Today when promoting the book. “If you really care about changing your life, you really got to unpack all of that trauma and understand who you are outside of it and get the healing that you need.”

His breakdown occurred shortly before the opening of his biggest hit, 2019’s Shazam! A fun offshoot of the perpetually troubled DC Comics movie universe, it featured Levi as the chirpy, squared-jawed alter-ego of a 14-year-old boy summoned by the uttering of the word “Shazam.” Levi’s character was a cross between Superman and Dougal from The Magic Roundabout, and he brought an earnest, slapstick zing to the part.

Shazam! was a smash and seemed to set Levi up at the head of a lucrative franchise. Alas, it hit the skids with its dire 2023 sequel, Fury of the Gods, which earned a disastrous $57 million at the US box office and was trounced by reviewers (a “retch-inducing mix of pixels and gibberish,” said the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin).

This was the point at which many fans were introduced to the more complicated figure behind Levi’s breezy exterior. Defending the film as decent family entertainment, he hit out at critics.

“The second movie was not as well-received. The audience score is still quite good, but the critics score was, I don’t know, very oddly and perplexingly low, and people were insanely unkind,” he said.

“Listen, I’ve been a part of things and as much as I wish that they were good, I know that they’re okay, I know they missed a lot. I’m not saying Shazam! Fury of the Gods is some perfect Orson Welles masterpiece, but it’s a darn good movie.”

Levi was just warming up. A few weeks on, at a fan convention in Chicago, he accused studios of churning out substandard entertainment. “I personally feel like the amount of content that comes out of Hollywood that is garbage – they don’t care enough to actually make it great for you guys,” Levi said, to whoops of applause. “They don’t. How many times do you watch a trailer and go, ‘Oh my God, this looks so cool!’ Then you go to the movie and it’s like, ‘This was what I get?’ They know that once you’ve already bought the ticket and you’re in the seat, they’ve got your money. And the only way for us to change any of it is to not go to the garbage. We have to actively not choose the garbage. It’ll help. It’ll help a lot.”

He was still tilting at sacred cows when he crossed the Atlantic to appear at Manchester Comic-Con in July 2023. There, he expressed frustration about being prohibited from speaking about Shazam! or Chuck because of the ongoing Sag-Afra strike, which banned members of America’s acting union from discussing previous or ongoing projects.

“I’m not allowed to talk about… this is so dumb. I’m not allowed to talk about any of my previous work. I’m not allowed to talk about movies that I may be a superhero in. I’m not allowed to talk about TV shows that I may have been a nerd who worked at a Best Buy [i.e. Chuck].”

The remarks ricocheted around social media – and while Levi said the comments were taken out of context, he didn’t exactly back down. “Let me be very clear. I fully support my union, the WGA, and the strike… But we also cannot forget our fans during this strike. Fans that spend their money and energy travelling far distances to talk with us about our work that means so much to them, we should be able to engage.”

Levi also complained that an attempt to weave Shazam! into the wider DC Universe was “thwarted” by another party. That individual was widely taken to be Dwayne Johnson after it emerged he had nixed plans for Shazam to cameo in his (disastrous) Black Adam movie and vetoed a proposed appearance by Black Adam in Fury of the Gods. “We need the truth!” thundered Levi in an Instagram post, which he addressed to his “Shazamily.”

Away from the world of superheroes, he has proved equally adept at generating controversy. In January 2023, he responded to a tweet asking, “Do you agree or not that Pfizer is a real danger to the world” with the words “hardcore agree”.  He went on to share a link to a US Justice Department press release explaining that Pfizer is paying $2.3 billion as part of a fraud settlement in 2009. “Just one example of what I’m referring to,” wrote Levi.

A month later, he was digging another hole for himself when he came out in support of divisive Canadian academic Jordan Peterson. Speaking to podcast host Joe Rogan, he described  Petersen as “one of the deepest thinkers I’ve ever heard break down… human behaviour”.

He was speaking to Rogan shortly after Peterson was suspended from Twitter (as it then was) for making anti-transgender comments about actor Elliot Page. It was widely noted that Levi did not correct Rogan after the host dead-named Page on the podcast. He also expressed the view that people were too caught up in the “drama” of the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp libel trial.

“I dunno man, I feel like it’s making us less empathetic ultimately. We all get to look at these people literally like you’re saying they’re having a marital dispute. We’re all getting brought in on their s___. Their traumas, all that stuff. And everyone just gets to sit around eating popcorn and judging the entire fiasco because it’s entertainment, now?”

Added to that list of what many in Hollywood consider grounds for banishment, four years ago, he expressed empathy with supporters of Donald Trump. “My hope and prayer is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris answer that very call, in the same way I hoped and prayed that Donald Trump would do the same.”

He later wrote, “I am no fan or supporter of Trump, and I find his behaviour to be vulgar, callous, narcissistic, and lacking empathy. And while I’m not a conservative, I know many who backed 45 [Trump] not because they liked him, but because he was the only candidate they felt cared about their needs.”

The replies from many of his followers were along the lines of “read the room”. But if Levi read the room, he wouldn’t be who he is today: an oddball actor who has – by movie industry standards – jammed his foot in his mouth repeatedly and yet somehow still has a career.

More than a career, in fact. With Harold and the Purple Crayon receiving positive reviews, he is poised to finally exit the wreckage of Shazam! Fury of the Gods (plans for a Shazam 3 were hastily scrapped last year). Levi’s a rare Hollywood star who admits to believing in Jesus. Could he on the brink of an unlikely resurrection himself?

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