I used to like Zachary Levi’s work. We loved Tangled in this house. He is also one of those Broadway people who found commercial success in live action movies and TV, and I was into it. However, once he started showing his true face, coming out as an anti-vaxxer Trump supporter, he became despicable to me.
Levi made headlines again this week when he posted a long, LONG rant on Instagram which said, among other horrible things, that late actor Gavin Creel, who starred with Levi in She Loves Me on Broadway, may have gotten his deadly form or rare cancer because he got the COVID vaccine.
Not only is his statement hugely offensive, ghoulish, shockingly vile, and uncompassionate, it does not have any scientific merit. Zachary Levi is neither a doctor, nor does he play one on TV, now that Mrs. Maisel kicked him to the curb. Additionally, he says in his video that he learned of Creel’s death via a mutual friend’s social media post. This means that he was likely not in contact with his former co-star, since he found out like the rest of us, and therefore had no privileged information about Creel’s illness.
Levi didn’t even make a tribute post about Creel when he learned about his death, which my highly curated feed was flooded with in the wake of the actor’s unexpected death with just about every costar or admirer of Creel’s posting about their grief for the loss of their friend.
People familiar with Levi, Creel, or the greater Broadway community were quick to comment. On the video itself, Tony Award winner Norbert Leo Butz, who originated the role of Fiyero in Wicked, said, “So incredibly disappointed you would politicize Gavin’s death. Really tried to give you the benefit here. Made it halfway through, which was hard as hell. But Was (sic) utterly heartbroken, as he would have been, that you felt the need to use his life and legacy to promote this awful platform. 💔.”
Fans took to the comment section of Levi’s post, Reddit, Twitter, and elsewhere to condemn him for these vile comments. X user Noah Delgado said it well: “For Zachary Levi to be anti-vax is one thing. For him to use Creel’s death to spread misinformation and campaign for Donald Trump is disgusting. It’s ghoulish, manipulative and utterly inhumane. If a ‘friend’ did that after my death, I’d haunt them for the rest of eternity.”
Many comments and posts say variants of “Keep Gavin Creel’s name out of your f---ing mouth.” Many suggested that instead of giving attention to Levi’s horrible comments, we should put our energy towards reading tributes to Creel such as the touching one Creel’s Hair co-star and close friend Will Swenson wrote for American Theatre, titled, “Gavin Creel Let the Sun Shine in Every Room.”
As someone lucky enough to see Creel live on stage on a few precious occasions, I couldn’t agree more. He was a special actor who both commanded attention with memorable performances and who helped his co-stars shine as brightly.
Grieving people often try to find a scapegoat when someone young, previously healthy, and beloved dies. In his video, Levi says of Creel’s fast moving, rare sarcoma, “This turbo cancer just happened.” He’s right. If he’d shut up then, we may have been able to empathize with his grief. But no, he went on to make dangerous, incorrect statements.
While it makes sense that people, Levi included, would be grasping for a reason for the tragic death of his costar, to quote Hamilton, “Death doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints.” Many memorialized Creel, including other She Loves Me costar and Melania Trump impersonator Laura Benanti, who called him a prince, a saint, and an all-around great person. Yet Creel still got cancer and died, while someone like Levi is making these videos.
