Laura Benanti Admits She ‘Never Liked’ Former Co-Star Zachary Levi After He Politicized Gavin Creel’s Death: ‘F—k You Forever’ | Video
Laura Benanti starred alongside both Zachary Levi and the late, great Gavin Creel in “She Loves Me” on Broadway in 2016 — except she had vastly different experiences with the actors.
The Tony-winning actress got extra candid during her Wednesday appearance on “That’s a Gay Ass Podcast,” bluntly revealing she “never liked” the “Chuck” star, especially now that his political beliefs have become a topic of conversation.
“Yeah, I never liked him. Everyone was like, ‘He’s so great,’ and I was like, ‘No, he’s not. He’s sucking up all the f–king energy in this room and he wants to mansplain everybody’s parts to them,'” Benanti recalled. “He really sucked everybody in with his dance party energy, like, ‘We’re doing a dance party at half-hour.’ I was like, ‘Good luck, have fun.’”
However, it wasn’t just a personality clash that led to Benanti publicly eviscerating Levi eight years later. As podcast host Eric Williams noted, the “Harold and the Purple Crayon” actor paid tribute to fellow former co-star Creel following his death from cancer at age 48 in September … by implying COVID-19 vaccines may have actually caused “turbo cancer” in him.
“I know that this is going to offend some people and make some people mad, and I wish it didn’t,” Levi said in an October Instagram Live video. “A few weeks ago, my friend Gavin Creel died. He was 48 years old, and he was one of the healthiest people I knew.”
“You better believe that, with everything in me, I believe that if these COVID vaccinations were not forced on the American public…” he then trailed off.
Benanti did not mince her words when reacting to Levi’s stance on Wednesday: “For him to use Gavin’s memory — a person he was not friends with — 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, ‘F—k you forever.’”
She further acknowledged how the “Tangled” voice actor embracing his more conservative side will actually help his career, as opposed to what others may think.
“And everyone’s like, ‘It’s career suicide.’ But it’s not career suicide, because Christian, faith-based TV and film is huge. He’s going to be a huge f—king star in that realm. He’s going to make more money than he ever has,” Benanti said. “It makes me nauseous, but also a little bit, like, ‘I told you, motherf—kers.’”
Notably, Benanti and Levi ended up working together again shortly after their musical closed in “Tangled: Before Ever After” in 2017, as well as on two episodes of the spinoff series, “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.”
TheWrap has reached out to Levi’s team for comment.
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