Shazam! star Zach Levy on how therapy saved his life and why he wants Joaquin Phoenix’s dark roles
Shazam! Fury of the Gods star Zachary Levy reveals why he couldn’t have handled a meteoric rise like Chris Hemsworth and how therapy saved his life.
In his guise as Shazam, the teenage boy who becomes a superhero by saying that magic word, Zachary Levi has accomplished all manner of mighty feats.
But the actor himself says his most impressive – and lifesaving achievement – came before he ever even donned the bright red suit with the lightning bolt. In fact it was the main reason he was even able to headline his own big-budget DC superhero film in the first place.
The American star of TV hits Less Than Perfect and Chuck, and movies including Tangled and Thor: the Dark World, has struggled with anxiety and clinical depression for much of his life. His mental health battle came to a head in 2017, leading to the brave decision to finally seek professional help.
“I had a total mental breakdown,” he recalls over Zoom call from Los Angeles. “I went to therapy, saved my life and literally, as I was finishing that therapy, I booked the role of Shazam.
“And it was because I had enough of a breakthrough where I understood something about my life that I did not understand previous to that. I had not understood that all of the pressures and the responsibilities of whatever this life would be, I was not ready for, clearly.”
Levi was so adamant about the value that seeking help brought to his life that he wrote a book about his mental health journey, released last year and titled Radical Love: Learning To Accept Yourself and Others. He’s now open and accepting of his journey and encourages others to do the same. While he values the clout and opportunities that Shazam! has brought him, thanks to the $540 million it took at the box office in 2017 – warranting the coming sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods – he appreciates his state of mind in 2023 even more.
“The most my life has changed has been less about the movie and more about the mental health journey I’ve been on since right before getting the job and all the way through these last five and a half years,” he says, “and how much that has been a positive impact on my life and then also then how that affects the things that manifest in my life, including other jobs.
“That’s why you got to work on yourself. And if you can, oh my God, the riches that can come. Not just even physical riches, but emotional and mental and spiritual riches and your ability to become a deeper person in your life.”
Given his fragile state of mind, Levi is pretty sure he couldn’t have coped with the spotlight and pressure that come with headlining a superhero film that is of the broader DC Extended Universe, which also features more household names like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. He points to the meteoric rise of his Thor co-star Chris Hemsworth as having the career trajectory that every actor thinks they want, but is also one that they can’t necessarily handle.
“Hemsy, he literally went from ‘I’m going to be this f--king sexy Star Trek captain for a minute and go sacrifice my life’ and then he’s Thor and he’s everywhere, and well deserved it,” he says. “That’s a meteoric kind of a rise but we’re not always ready for it. I firmly believe God, the universe, doesn’t give you more than you can handle and I think that my career and my life has gone exactly like that.”
Levi says he was “chuffed and stoked” to be able to return to what he says is the “coolest role I have ever gotten to play” in Shazam! Fury of the Gods. The action takes place “three-ish” years after the action of the first film with his character Billy Batson/Shazam! (played in non-superhero form again by Asher Angel) having an existential crisis and still struggling to come to terms with the powers given to him by an ancient wizard and eventually shared with his foster brothers and sisters.
He’s just about to age out of the foster care system and is faced with losing the family he’s waited his whole life for, when his leadership and mettle is tested with the arrival of the Daughters of Atlas, who bring with them a weapon that could destroy the world.
“He’s trying to be a good leader, a good brother, a good son, and one that is still valuable enough that doesn’t have to get kicked out of his family because he’s terrified he’s going to lose them,” says Levi.
“And then you add to that three nefarious, badass goddesses played by Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu and Rachel Zegler, and his troubles multiply, but also we get this introduction of these awesome three characters that are played so well by three incredibly talented and lovely women, who were an incredible addition to the whole Shazam-ily as a package.”
Although Shazam! Fury of the Gods namechecks some of his fellow superheroes, Levi says he doesn’t have a clue where the new film sits within the DC Extended Universe. The two men now in charge of the film future of the comic book giant’s roster of superheroes, Peter Safran and James Gunn, are old friends of Levi and he says he trusts their judgment. The pair have already nixed the eagerly-anticipated return of Henry Cavill as Superman and put any future plans of Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam on ice, both of whom appeared to be likely candidates for a Shazam! crossover at some point.
“I’m a little biased, but even if I didn’t really know them, I still would have known James’s work,” he says of Gunn, who has said that best chance of there being a third Shazam! film is for a lot of people to go and see the second one.
“I believe in James’s work – it’s kind of undeniably good. Obviously all art and entertainment is subjective on some level, but there’s also a lot of objectivity in what makes something an excellent thing. And he knows that – and he’s also a comic nerd so I feel very confident in whatever our trajectory is in the DC Universe. I don’t know what it is but I don’t need to know. It’s above my paygrade.”
In the meantime, Levi is determined to keep mixing up roles to challenge himself and audiences’ perceptions of him. He followed up the first Shazam! film by playing a secretive, oily government agent (“really, a prick,” he says) opposite Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2021 legal drama, The Mauritanian, and says he finds the idea of doing the same thing over and over again to be boring.
“I liked being a little unsavoury,” he says with a laugh. “I love playing characters, with big amazing hearts that want to save the world because I feel very akin to all that, but I also want to be bad guys. I want to be snarly and gnarly and dark and weird. You know, all the roles Joaquin Phoenix plays.”
Shazam! Fury Of the Gods is in cinemas March 16
Originally published as Shazam! star Zach Levy on how therapy saved his life and why he wants Joaquin Phoenix’s dark roles
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