Zachary Levi slammed by Broadway star for politicizing Gavin Creel's death 'to promote' anti-vax stance: 'Utterly heartbroken'
The "Shazam" actor claimed that Creel, who died from cancer last month, "would be alive right now" had he not gotten the COVID-19 vaccine.
Tony award-winning Broadway actor Norbert Leo Butz is calling out Zachary Levi for politicizing the death of fellow stage actor Gavin Creel during a bizarre political rant.
In a comment on the video — which was an Instagram Live that Levi then post on his grid — Butz wrote that he was “so incredibly disappointed” by the Shazam star’s harmful claim that Creel would still be alive had he not received the COVID-19 vaccine. His comment comes less than a month after Creel died from a rare and aggressive form of cancer on Sept. 30 at age 48.
“Really tried to give you the benefit here. Made it halfway through, which was hard as hell,” Butz (Catch Me if You Can) wrote. “But Was utterly heartbroken, as he would have been, that you felt the need to use his life and legacy to promote this awful platform.”
Related: Celebrity deaths 2024: Remembering the stars we've lost this year
As part of his hour-long livestream, Levi, who previously worked with Creel in the 2016 Broadway revival of She Loves Me, spoke out about his current political stance and recent endorsement for former president Donald Trump before bringing up Creel’s death.
“I know that this is going to offend some people and make some people mad, and I wish it didn’t,” Levi prefaced. “So, a few weeks ago, my friend Gavin Creel died. He was 48 years old, and he was one of the healthiest people I knew.”
Levi noted that Creel was someone who looked after himself, ate well, and was physically fit until he was suddenly diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma in July and died two months later. “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,” Levi declared, before pausing to note that he wasn’t casting blame on any of the theater owners or producers involved but rather the “people at the top."
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
“They knew the cost benefit of these shots, and it was garbage. Guys, it was garbage. They knew that there would be plenty of side effects, including turbo cancers. They knew,” he swore. “And I, without a shadow of a doubt, I believe that Gavin Creel would be alive right now — right f---king now — he would still be alive if that stuff didn't get put into his body.”
In the aftermath of Creel’s death, an increasingly emotional Levi explained that he received flak from people asking when he planned to post a tribute to his late costar. “I f---ing couldn't, I didn't know what to say,” he stated. “I didn't even know what to type like… How do I how do I honor my friend? And if I just write what a wonderful man that he was and how talented he was, he was so f—king talented, but that's not honoring him if, deep down, I think that he'd still be alive right now. Because he should. And that, to me, is honoring him, talking about it.”
Levi openly admitted that he could be “wrong” about the COVID vaccine causing Creel’s cancer. Both the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society have publicly debunked the theory in the past, with the NCI stating that “there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer, lead to recurrence, or lead to disease progression.”
“We all have these different ideas and different opinions about what's true and what's not. I get that, and I do believe I have just enough humility to recognize that — even though I feel very convicted of what I believe in — I could be wrong, which is why, when people post about them voting for Kamala [Harris] or posting this opinion or that opinion, you know what I don't do?” He asked. “I don't go jump down their f---ing throats and get in their DMs and make them feel shamed or try to shame them, because I at least have enough humility to recognize, 'Wait a minute, I could be totally f---ing wrong. They could be right.'"
He also issued a statement to those who diagree with him. "Just ask yourself, legitimately: could you be wrong about any of these things? I think all of us, in the privacy of our own home, we all kind of acknowledge, 'Yeah, I guess I could be f---ing wrong about this and that and whatever.' But when it comes to all of a sudden how we present ourselves online, and this war that we feel like we need to go wage against the other side, all of a sudden, there's no doubt that your righteous indignation is completely justified. And it is not.”
Levi added that he won’t be “shamed” by the public into changing his political beliefs, either.
“Moreover, for all of you out there who thought foolishly, ‘Oh, this'll get him to change his mind. This will get him to to not vote for Trump and to recant what he said and come back to the other side.’ Are you f—king nuts? Are you nuts that you would think that shake trying to shame me into believing what you believe is gonna do anything to get me closer to what you believe? Guys, this is not the approach.”