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There’s no love lost between She Loves Me lovebirds, Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi.
Though they shared the Broadway stage in a successful and Tony Award-winning 2016 musical revival, Benanti made it clear in a new podcast interview that she was never a fan of Levi, who at the time was a successful TV star from NBC’s Chuck and on his way to movie stardom as the title character in DC’s Shazam! “I never liked him,” Benanti told Eric Williams on his That’s a Gay Ass Podcast. “Everyone was like, ‘He’s so great!’ And I was like, ‘No, he’s not. He’s sucking up all the fucking energy in this room. He wants to mansplain everybody’s part to them.’”
Directed by Scott Ellis and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, the Roundabout Theatre Company production starred Benanti and Levi opposite Jane Krakowski, Gavin Creel, Byron Jennings, Tom McGowan, Peter Bartlett, Nicholas Barasch and others. The story centered on two shop employees, played by Benanti and Levi, who, despite being consistently at odds with each other at work, are unaware that each is the other’s secret pen pal.
Benanti did not mince words by claiming that Levi, “really sucked everybody in with his, like, dance party energy. Like, ‘We’re doing a dance party at half-hour.’ I was like, ‘Good luck. Have fun.’”
The conversation then turned to Creel. The beloved Broadway veteran died in September at the age 48, following a brief battle with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, metastatic melanotic peripheral nerve sheath sarcoma. His death came as a shock to both the theater and entertainment communities, resulting in an outpouring of love and heartfelt tributes from New York to Los Angeles and everywhere in between.
Zachary Levi, Laura Benanti, Jane Krakowski and Gavin Creel pose together during the opening night festivities for She Loves Me at New York’s Studio 54 on March 17, 2016. Levi, Benanti and Krakowski all received Tony Award nominations while the show won for outstanding revival of a musical. Theo Wargo/Getty Images During an Instagram Live a little more than a month after Creel’s passing, Levi claimed that his former co-star’s death from a “turbo cancer” was due to the COVID-19 vaccine. “You better believe that, with everything in me, I believe that if these COVID vaccinations were not forced on the American public, that the theaters weren’t being pushed and leveraged…,” he said before trailing off, suggesting the two were linked. His post, titled “Trump, Triage, Corruption, Covid and the potential end of the world,” fell under fire from performers who immediately jumped into his comments section to slam his theory.
Benanti also found it offensive. “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,’” the veteran actress said on the podcast, seen in the below clip.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Levi for comment.
Jonathan Groff, Laura Benanti, James Corden, Jane Krakowski, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Zachary Levi and Danielle Brooks perform during the 70th Tony Awards at New York’s Beacon Theatre on June 12, 2016. Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)
