In what sounds like an awkward joke at a fan event, the 'Shazam! Fury of the Gods' star laments not being able to talk about his film and TV works due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
- Aug 4, 2023
AceShowbiz - Zachary Levi's stance on the actors strike has been questioned following his recent comments. The "Chuck" alum has been dragged online after calling the actors strike rules "dumb" at a fan event.
On Thursday night, August 3, a video started circulating online showing the 42-year-old speaking onstage at what appears to be Manchester Comic-Con, which took place in the U.K. late last month. In the clip, he lamented that he couldn't talk about his past film and TV works, including "Chuck", "Tangled" and the "Shazam!" films, due to the strike.
"I'm not allowed to talk about… This is so dumb. I'm not allowed to talk about my previous work," Levi said in the video, before he took an indirect approach to mention them. "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'm not allowed to talk about any animated princess movies that I was fantastic in as the best prince ever. I'm not allowed to talk about those things."
It's not clear what Levi said before or after the clip, but many took it as a sign of disapproval to the strike. "Oh we're about to witness a downfall rivaled only by Zachary Levi," one Twitter user ominously predicted.
A second person sarcastically wrote, "Such a great actor, he is so committed to his role as Shazam he has been acting like a child ever since." A third responded, "He's less mature than his actual child costar," while another echoed the sentiment, "The definition of a manchild, fitting he's cast as Shazam."
"What is he blabbering about? He ain't even got a project to promote post strike," another mocked the actor, while someone else wrote, "Does he not know what a strike is? Like it makes perfect sense for actors to not promote their movies if they are striking. Don't understand what made this guy need to talk about himself all the time like he used to be normal."
Someone, however, defended the "Thor: Ragnarok" star as claiming, "Zachary Levi fully supports the strike.I was there.He was about to do Q&A with a full house and tried to put it in a funny way why he wouldn't be able to mention the movies & roles he would be questioned about."
Indeed, last month Levi posted on his Instagram page a video in which he passionately explained the need for a strike. "[The studio executives] do not care about human life, they don't care about, really, life in general. They care about profits," he said in the clip.
He added, "It's always profit over people and not the other way around. So mark my words, if we don't do something drastic right now... we're doing something very drastic, and we need to be doing this very drastic thing." He went on stressing, "We need to be striking, we should have done this years ago."
