Zachary Levi, the actor best known for his role in Shazam, has openly expressed conservative views in recent years. Despite this, in a recent conversation with Bill Maher, he dismissed any notion that his beliefs have negatively impacted his career.
Levi appeared on Maher’s Club Random podcast, where the host seemed skeptical about Levi not facing any backlash in Hollywood after publicly supporting Donald Trump for president in September.
“Have I been canceled?” the actor said with a laugh. “I hope I haven’t been canceled yet. I mean, if it happens, it happens.”
Maher responded, “Come on, didn’t you lose jobs for that? Isn’t that what canceling is?”
Levi responded to Maher’s doubts by saying, “No. For supporting Trump? I mean, look, I am yet to see the full extent of the consequences. I had several jobs lined up for shooting or in the pipeline, and none of them have been affected.”
Levi maintained that he hasn’t received any criticism from Hollywood studios or his team regarding his political beliefs. In addition to endorsing Trump, the Harold and the Purple Crayon star also openly criticized the covid vaccine and the SAG-AFTRA strike.
He explained, “None of my producers or any of the studios behind those films or projects have called and said, ‘Hey listen this is a line too far, and we can’t have you associated with the project anymore.’”
“We’re all still full steam ahead on those. How it ultimately plays out in the future? I don’t know,” he continued. “They might say, ‘Hey listen, we’ve had some phone calls with some people and they don’t wanna work with you anymore.’ I don’t know.”
Levi has certainly seen criticism from his peers, however. His former Broadway co-star Laura Benanti, who starred opposite the Chuck actor in the 2016 production She Loves Me, admitted that she “never liked him” during a recent appearance on That’s a Gay Ass Podcast.
She did not mince words when she addressed the hour-long Instagram Live Levi did after Gavin Creel died at the age of 48, where he claimed the Tony-winning actor passed from a “turbo cancer” caused by the covid vaccine. Levi later shared the Live on social media under the title “Trump, Triage, Corruption, Covid, and the potential end of the world.”
“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, ‘Fuck you forever,’” Benanti said.
Levi’s career has not slowed down since 2023 with several releases in the family/children’s genre, including Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Spy Kids: Armageddon, and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
He’s next set to appear in the disaster drama Not Without Home with Josh Duhamel and Liam Neeson’s new thriller, Hotel Tehran.
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&appId=823934954307605&version=v2.8”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
