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This past summer, Zachary Levi officially came out as a Trump supporter and has been showing his ass all over Twitter. He’s made it known for a while now that he’s hardcore Evangelical and anti-vaxx, but this latest embrace of all things MAGA has been super cringe to watch, particularly because he’s mixed his sh-tty opinions with a large dose of self-pity. You know how it goes with his type. His career is struggling and his showbiz friends supposedly don’t want to talk to him anymore because of his political beliefs. It has nothing to do with his less-than-charming personality.
Back in 2016, Zachary co-starred in the revival of the Broadway musical She Loves Me with beloved B-way actors Laura Benanti and Gavin Creel. Sadly, Gavin passed away from a rare, aggressive form of cancer in late September at 48 years young. It really shook the Broadway community because Gavin was a huge talent who was liked and respected by all of his peers. As people like him are wont to do, Zachary jumped on the “my friend died” bandwagon…only he took it one step further. He made an Instagram post that blamed the Covid vaccine for Gavin’s cancer. People were rightfully outraged. Last week, Laura appeared on Eric Williams’ “That’s a Gay Ass Podcast.” During her appearance, not only did Laura tell everyone just how much she hated working with Zachary, she also basically told him to eat sh-t, belting out “F-ck you forever” with her whole diaphragm.
Laura Benanti may have led the Broadway revival of “She Loves Me” with Zachary Levi in 2016, but the actress certainly doesn’t share the sentiment of the title. Benanti opened up about the ill feelings she maintains about her former co-star this week on the That’s a Gay Ass Podcast, hosted by Eric Williams.
“I never liked him. Everyone was like, ‘He’s so great!’ And I was like, ‘No, he’s not. He’s sucking up all the f-cking energy in this room. He wants to mansplain everybody’s part to them,’” Benanti said. “He really sucked everybody in with his dance party energy, like, ‘We’re doing a dance party at half-hour.’ I was like, ‘Good luck, have fun.’”
Benanti’s criticism of Levi reached an emotional peak when the conversation touched on their “She Loves Me” co-star Gavin Creel, who died in September at the age of 48. The Tony Award winner, whose Broadway credits also included “Hair,” “Hello, Dolly” and “Into the Woods,” died of a metastatic melanotic peripheral nerve sheath sarcoma. Speaking about Creel’s death on Instagram in October, Levi floated an unscientific theory tied to COVID vaccinations.
“I know that this is going to offend some people and make some people mad, and I wish it didn’t. A few weeks ago, my friend Gavin Creel died. He was 48 years old, and he was one of the healthiest people I knew. … You better believe that, with everything in me, I believe that if these COVID vaccinations were not forced on the American public…” Levi said before trailing off.
Benanti blasted Levi for using the topic of Creel’s death to spread vaccine misinformation: “For him to use Gavin’s memory — a person he was not friends with — to use his memory for his political agenda and to watch him try to make himself cry until he had one single tear, which he did not wipe away, I was like, ‘F—k you forever.’”
Whew, go off, Laura. Say it louder for those in the back. She is clearly a disciple of the Patti LuPone School of Not Giving a F-ck. I mean, there’s nothing like a mad woman, #amirite? What Zachary said was so inappropriate and out-of-line that I remember thinking at the time that this was a real turning point for him in terms of letting his R flag fly. There was no going back after that because in the name of his terrible views, he invoked an actor whose death left deep holes in his community. Meh.
It’s a bummer that Chuck ended up being such a massive douche bag because I loved that show while it was airing. They also had the *best* Comic-Con panels. Oh, well, this is why we can’t have nice things. Also, WTF is this dance party thing for grown-ass adults who are doing their jobs and not participating in a high school production? Ugh, how annoying. I also would have been over it after the first time.
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