Hollywood Star Reveals Why Actors Are Afraid to Speak Out - Zachary Levi | PBD Podcast #872

0:00They're just looking for ways to destroy you. But the road to being a superhero hasn't always been a smooth one for Levi. And then all of these buzz feeds and everybody else starts writing these hit pieces, fabricating all kinds of things about who I am. How much did it cost you? Oh, it's cost me a lot. But God uses all of that. God used every one of those ingredients to make the soup that is me. Are there a lot of conservatives that flat out will never talk about their politics in Hollywood? It's none of your business. I mean, listen, man, because Hollywood, you can't step out of that narrative.

0:34But this time with Bobby, with Tulsi, J.D. Vance, with Elon, with that whole dream team. And if we don't go this way, if we go the other way, we are in dire straits if that happened. I read it somewhere that Shazam maybe was not going to happen with you. Hollywood was a big part of what put me in the place that I was in. Into lots of unhealthy activities and relationships and a lot of abusive powers in Hollywood. We're just like a cog. How much of this critics going from 90 to 49 was just because of comments you made publicly? There was a massive smear campaign that came after me. And my mom, my stepdad, and our family friend were there waiting for me to have like an intervention.

1:10And my mom looked at me and she said, you know what, Zachary? I'd be happier today if you were dead.

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2:00Thank you so much. Zachary Levi, how are you? I'm doing well. We're finally doing this. I know. We're finally getting to meet in person. We've talked on the phone. We've talked on the phone. The first time was what? I was on Joe. You called me afterwards, Rogan. I think I slid into your DMs on Instagram or something. I saw you on Rogan. You had an idea. You were like, I'm thinking about doing this. It was all an idea conversation. I think so. It was probably, I legitimately don't remember exactly, but given my life and what I've been trying to build for the last 25 years, it might have been Wildwood, the real estate development I'm doing in Austin.

2:37Like a movie studio, living community, was that what I was talking to you about? You were talking about a social media company and what if we create the community. But you know what impression I got is this guy's different. He's not just an actor. Because, you know, you'll get messages. People, hey, I agree with you here. I don't know if I agree with you here. You'll have a good conversation with them. But, you know, there's been a couple guys that I talked to. Like Vince Vaughn and I had a long conversation together one time. I'm like, this guy, one of my favorite actors. I can love the work he does.

3:09But also wicked smart. Oh, my God, the guy is brilliant. You're like, who is this guy? Yeah. And, you know, he just kind of loves his passion and what he's doing. Yeah. But I enjoyed the conversation that you and I had. And I said, yeah, this guy is different. And, of course, now we're having this sit down here in the great state of Florida. In the great state of Florida. That's right. So question for you. By the way, the audience missed one of the best conversations we had about zodiac signs. Because both you and I are Libras. Yeah. You're September. The best. The best. Hands down, it's been studied and documented.

3:39You're 929. I'm 1018. Yeah. A question. So I watch you. Of course, we're going to talk about the movie that came out. And there's some interesting correlation with the movie. Watch it last night. that's with my kids. My 10-year-old daughter was glued. She couldn't. I'm like, babe, we got to watch this before the Yankees game begins. So we watched the whole thing. We'll get to that with Tommy Lee Jones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great list of actors in a movie. But I watch you. I'm like, okay, so this guy's an A-lister actor. You've done Shazam. Okay? You've done a lot of different things. Even going back in the days when you had your show that you were doing that did very well.

4:13I think you guys were on for Chuck for like five, six seasons you were on. But there's a part. there's two different types of actors that I see in Hollywood who think for themselves. Maybe they're libertarians. Maybe they're independent. Maybe they have some conservative leanings. But they have to ask a question at one point. Do I continue just doing the acting job? Or all these questions that I have on my mind, is there something bigger for me? So then I see correlation with you and Reagan. You're a bigger actor than Reagan. Reagan didn't do it as big as you've done. You've done bigger movies than he's done.

4:47You've done bigger blockbuster deals. He wasn't necessarily an A-lister as an actor, although he was a good actor, even if you read about it of folks. Is there anything in here with Zachary Levi that's beyond just Hollywood? Because if it's just Hollywood, you wouldn't give your opinion on COVID, you know, taxes and all this other stuff. Oh, man.

5:12Listen, I think that it's folly to build your identity out of your career. Not that that's not a part of your identity or a part of what God has put you on this planet to do, but first and foremost, God puts us on this planet to make this planet a better place, I believe. And I've always believed that. Ever since I was a kid, I have a very deep love for humanity, for all of humanity. And I believe that whatever platform God gives me or any of us for that matter, we are stewards of that platform. We are stewards of our gifts and our blessings, our talents, our treasure. And we ought to leverage all of that to the means that we can in order to go make this a better world for everybody who's living in it.

6:04Now, obviously, that becomes subjective. Some people think a better world is this, and some people think a better world is that. But, you know, so I, because I care about all that more than I care about my acting career, although I very much do care about my acting career. You do. You do care about that more than your acting career. Well, yeah, I think we have to. I think we have to. I mean, I hate that we all love sitting around spitting out these idioms of, like, you know, evil happens when good men do nothing. we all want to believe that we all say these things, but then where are the good men when something needs to be done?

6:41And in this last election, and when it came to COVID and the vaccines and all of those things, I had eyes to see and ears to hear. I was watching all this stuff go down and I was like, listen, we've got to speak out. There is truth. It's being buried. There is darkness at work. And we must as good men stand up and say and do things in order to thwart that. Otherwise, the evil will just steamroll all of us. How much did it cost you? Oh, it's cost me a lot. It's cost me a lot. Can you quantify it? What is it? I mean, a million. Oh, as far as money is concerned. Oh, I don't honestly, I mean, probably millions.

7:18Certainly. I mean, you know, I was Shazam two and Harold and the purple crayon and I was doing like, you know, larger studio movies and I'm not doing larger studio movies now. I'm doing, I'm still working. Thank God. I'm very grateful for the people. Angel Studios, who, by the way, is a great example of trying to make a better version of Hollywood. They're super necessary. They're so necessary. Super necessary. Absolutely. This is why capitalism works. Yeah. And I have confidence in the future because of guys like this. Yeah. And so I'm very grateful for the Harmon brothers and everybody at Angel who sees who I am, sees my talent.

7:51Also is grateful for me stepping up and speaking out. Right. And I think there's a lot of people at a lot of the other legacy studios that might even agree with me, but they're still living under in fear because Hollywood, you can't step out of that narrative. You can't step out of the narrative. I mean, to to to even suggest that somebody might vote for anyone other than Kamala in the last election, because I was a Bobby Kennedy guy. I mean, that's what got me into all of it. I was all Bobby. And I knew that he needed to get into the position, at least that he's in right now. I wanted him to be the president, but for him to be head of HHS and to be leading that charge and doing the things that I think are absolutely necessary for the health and well-being physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually of this nation and this world, I think that Bobby Kennedy and the people that he's assembled over there are doing an excellent job.

8:39It's difficult. There's a lot of pushback. There's a lot of bureaucracy, as you know, but I think they're still doing a good job given the conditions that they're in. But even when I came out for Bobby, I was getting pushback in Hollywood. He was a lifelong Democrat that was fighting big corporations and doing good things. And yet he wasn't the narrative. He's crazy as the magazines went from loving this guy as the Kennedy and all of this stuff. And then as soon as he started to go against the grain of the pharmaceutical industrial complex and the power behind that and all of the money that they spend on advertising on all the news networks and all.

9:21well, then they're going to come after him. And they did. And anyone associated with him, they're going to come after us too. And then once that coalition with him and Trump happened, I was like, all right, I didn't vote for Trump the first two times, but this time with Bobby, with Tulsi, with JD Vance, with Elon, with that whole dream team, I'm like, to me, this is a no brainer. And if we don't go this way, if we go the other way, we are in, we were already in dire straits. We would be in far deeper, dire straits if that happened. Yeah. So in that moment, because the first glimpse of you being vocal was the comments you made about COVID, right?

9:56In January of a— About Pfizer, but yeah. Right, about Pfizer. It was about Pfizer that you made. And that was two months—that's January of, I don't know, 22? And then Shazam comes out— A couple months later. A couple months later, March of 23. And the first Shazam, you got 80-something percent. I even have the numbers, so I wanted to see if there was a correlation. Your first Shazam's reviews were exact critics, 90%. Audience was 81%. So 90%, I watch Shazam. I got four kids. I watch them multiple times. So 90%, 81%. Right. The second Shazam, critics dropped from 90 % to 49%. But audience went from 81 % to 85%.

10:40So people can say whatever they want to say. hey, when we go watch movies on Rotten Tomatoes, we look at what the audience says. The audience like it or not, critics. So January 29th, you make the comments about Pfizer. March 1723, Shazam 2 comes out, Fury of Gods opened. 924, year later, year and a half later, you publicly endorsed Trump. How much of this critics going from 90 to 49 was just because of your comments you made publicly? I mean, I don't know for sure, but I would say it certainly was a part of that. Listen, it's all very subjective. If a critic really liked the first one and didn't like the second one just because of its execution, artistically, whatever, like, that's fine.

11:25I think that there's parts of the first one that obviously was, it was very unique at the time. It was, you know, it's Tom Hanks in Big meets Christopher Reeves as Superman. I mean, it was a dream role. I loved playing it. I love doing the second one as well, but I can, I would also, you know, uh, accept that there are people that just literally genuinely critically, they didn't like the second one more. However, there was a massive smear campaign that came after me after I, you know, to me made not even that crazy of a tweet. It was, it was somebody that I saw in my for you. It wasn't even somebody I followed, but it was somebody that I, that I saw in the for you and they had made a tweet, a comment saying, you know, something along the lines of Pfizer is a, Pfizer, Pfizer is, is doing more bad in the world than they are good now or something like that.

12:14Right. Yeah. Do you agree? Do you agree or not that Pfizer is a real danger to the world? And I responded hardcore agree what they were doing, what they continue to do. And by the way, and I followed this with an example that wasn't even COVID vaccine related. It was this massive $4 billion, you know, class action lawsuit that they had to pay out because they, amongst, along with all of the other pharmaceutical companies for far too long, have been cooking the books with all of their statistics and data. This, this idea of like a peer reviewed, have you gone on a deep dive of peer reviewed? The peers, these peers are people that are getting paid to go only through the cherry picked data that the pharmaceutical company even shows them.

12:58They're not going through all of the data. They're only going through the cherry pick stuff, right? You understand this. All of this is documented. It's all documented. The book he wrote with all the documentation in the back. So all of that. So I'm like, Pfizer's clearly a danger to the world, as all of them are, because they don't value us more than their own bottom line. That is a danger. So anyway, I tweeted that. I got a lot of pushback. I got a lot of people involved in the studio and the team and everybody. Like, you got to take that down. And I was like, listen. David Sandberg called you.

13:27Hey, take it down. David Sandberg did not call me, no. Okay, so he didn't call you and say, take it down, don't do this. No, I don't want to get into names, but I will say that there were enough people involved in the project. Why are you ruining this? The movie's about to come out. This is bad. They're asking me to take it all down. And I said, listen, I go, if I take it down, first of all, what I wrote is not wrong. And by the way, a lot of people acknowledge, like we understand what you're saying and we know you're – but this – because what happened was I put that out And then all of these, you know, the buzz feeds and everybody else starts writing these hit pieces.

14:01By the way, fabricating all kinds of things about who I am and what I've said and what I've done and all of that. Because they're just looking for ways to destroy you. Using that apparatus of legacy media and social media and all of these things to come after you because you dared step out of the narrative and question the company that is making this miracle vaccine that's saving all of these lives. And a lot of that, most of that is bullshit. it. It's a psyop. We have been lied to for a long time, including, I believe, throughout the pandemic. But they came after me. People involved with the project said, hey, can you take this down?

14:35I go, listen, you and I both know that if I do take this down, this doesn't stop. In fact, it will just amplify what they're doing because they see blood in the water. Now they're going to come for me even more. And I'm like, no, I'm sorry. I should not have to cower. We should not have to cower to these people that are only driven out of darkness and lies and are trying to destroy people at that moment when you're going through this like do you remember the do you remember when you were at oh yeah where you were at when you tweeted yeah were you with a friend that you're like should i post it should i not post or were you like i'm posting it no i was no hesitation i was i i was in uh steamboat springs on a little like uh snowboard trip with some friends and i was like laying in bed on twitter x i think it was was it twitter still twitter yeah oh no i think it might have been x no it's x october of 22 yeah and um i don't know you know came across the thing i'm like to me i did not clearly see that this was going to spiral into what it was going to let's just say you don't do that okay let's just say you don't do that you don't endorse bobby you don't go and support trump you don't do all of that yeah is there a shazam 3 is there possibly i don't know i don't know what that would have ultimately would you have been in Black Adam because there was a scene with you and The Rock in Black Adam.

15:51Like, do you think the pressures went all the way there? I don't know that I would have been in Black Adam. There was all kinds of other things that were going on at DC at the time that were way above my pay grade that had nothing to do with any of my decisions. They were restructuring and like, there's a lot of all that stuff. There's no correlation between the two. Oh, I'm not. Well, I don't. Not entirely. I can't, there's no crystal ball I can't go back and say, by the way I wish I did have one, I wish I could even just to see how my career would have played out had I kept my mouth shut, but also Patrick, I mean listen, we love to sit around and talk about our veterans and our war heroes and give them praise, as we should thanks and praise for the job that they do, putting their literal physical life on the line, the sacrifice that they're willing to give in order to secure our liberty, our freedom, our democracy, right?

16:47We all love sitting around and talking about that. For the most part, we all. Some people are obviously very clouded and don't appreciate our armed services. But how can we do that if we ourselves are not willing to, at the very least, sacrifice our career or part of our career? Those people are sacrificing their lives to secure these freedoms. And I'm not willing to step up and say something, even if it means I might lose some jobs and I have, but is that worthy of going? And, you know, again, evil happens when bad, when good men do nothing. So, so you, you've worked with some big actors, not like you're, you're, you're in it.

17:25You were in it. You were with everybody. So it's not like you're not in that arena. Did any of the bigger names who maybe, maybe they're not conservative. Maybe they're not, maybe they're, you know, center left. Maybe they're just pro-choice and, you know, John F. Kennedy type, kind of like your parents before they became Reagan, you know, Reagan Republicans. But they used to be John F. Kennedy Democrats, right? And they come up to you and they're like, hey, I get what you're doing. I went through it as well. Just leave it alone. There's no benefit to doing this. Was there any conversations like that from big names?

17:58Did anybody like a mentor, maybe 20 or senior to come and have that call with you? No, not at all. No. Would that have changed anything? This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser? But Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+.

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20:11Can't wait to take it for a spin. Only the best for you, Mr. Shaq. Hey, have you always been so big, tall, and handsome? Not always. I was 6 '10 once. Seven days to love it or return it, Mr. Shaq. Not that I would. You never do. No, I never do. So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return the policy at caravana.com. Maybe, maybe, I don't know. Again, these are all like a lot of what a shoulda coulda maybes crystal ball type questions. I don't know. I will say that since making, I know why I made the decision. I prayed on it. I thought about it. And ultimately it was Tulsi Gabbard who I became friends with, who was, she and Bobby were doing these, you know, town halls leading up to the election.

20:58And it was a part of the Trump campaign, right? It was all, that was all now integrated. And they needed moderators at these various stops to moderate a conversation with her and Bobby. And would I be willing to do that, to be a part of this movement? And I thought and prayed on that a lot. And again, at the end of the day, I was like, well, if I can do this, if this can help to put these people, Tulsi and Bobby, and Elon and JD and ultimately Trump into these positions to help this country and keep us at least from completely falling apart, then I'm willing to do that. All of that said, looking at where we're at now, certain ways and policies that I wish the administration would do differently, right?

21:42And yet still, I think even where we're at right now is a better position than what could have been had it gone the other way with the election. But there's a lot of things that I don't agree with that are going on right now in this administration or in this world. And more than that, I will say, you know, I, I don't know that it's a regret that I feel, but it was a really interesting wake up call because I feel, I hoped that on the other side of standing up that in my other endeavors, you know, trying to build what I'm building in Austin, whatever all of these things are, that there would have been more conservatives that said, absolutely, man, like you really stuck your neck out to help to protect this country.

22:23And we want to invest in you. We want to invest in the things that you're wanting to do. Did those calls come or not really? No, no, not really. I mean, yes and no. I mean, there's still certain conversations that are still happening right now, but no, I don't feel like at the end of the day, I think that money's out there for you. If you go, if you hire a right investment banker, I think that money's out there for you. Maybe. Yeah. I don't think if you wanted to go, I'll put you in contact with one guy right afterwards. I've got a 22 billion auto fund. Talk to them and sell them your vision. There's not going to be a...

22:53Because these are true believers who also have access to money. I think that money's out there. But to me, the place where I went with you, comparisons with Ronald Reagan, good-looking, talk well, confidence. Have you sat there and said, maybe it's here, maybe God's speaking to me? Because, you know, McConaughey kind of flirted with it a little bit. We're like, is he going to do it? Are you talking about getting into the politics game? Actually getting into the politics game. I mean, listen, this goes back to the last time you and I talked, which was I had just done. Because now that, you know, the Pandora's box was opened and everything.

23:26I crossed the Rubicon. And then Jesse Waters, the L.A. was on fire and Jesse Waters had me on a show. I'm pretty sure this is how this timed out. And I was talking about, you know, listen, I live in Texas now. I've been there for nine years. I love living in Texas. I love the Austin area. It's fantastic. But I'm a Cali kid. I grew up in Cali my whole life, lived in Ventura, California, most of my life, and then L.A. for 15 years. I love California. It is one of the most beautiful places on the planet Earth. It has so much to offer, but it is literally and figuratively burning, right? And it was literally burning at that time.

24:01And I went on Jesse Waters, and I just spoke my mind about I think that this is very, very, very poor, if not criminal leadership within California. and I think that, you know, God gave me the words to speak in that moment and they were effective and multiple people, including you, then reached out to me and said, have you thought about running for governor of California? And I think I told you this on that phone call, which was, I've been asked throughout my life to step into various leadership roles, including getting into politics or people saying like, have you ever considered getting into politics?

24:36Because you would make a really good politician or whatever. And I think the reason why I get that is because I genuinely, genuinely, genuinely care about humanity. I genuinely care about good policy. I genuinely care and believe that good policy comes from both very deep empathy for people that is balanced by very deep logic. We cannot have one that's overpowering the other. On the left, you have what Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy. And on the right, you have a lot of people that are just brass tacks, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps type of people that are not recognizing that some people are trying to do that.

25:08but very incapable given where they're at in their life. We have got to see both sides of that. And I believe that God has given me very deep, good portions of both empathy and logic. And I can speak reasonably eloquently. So I understand all that. And the platform that God has given me with my acting career like Reagan did. But here's the thing, and this is what I tell everybody and what I told you. If that's where God wants me, then that door has to be flung wide open and God's got to pick me up and throw me through it. Because to get into that world, is a whole other level of demons and darkness that you have to fight through.

25:44Look at what our administration, look what Bobby's having to do. Look what every single time, a new president, new senators. Also, then I, by the way, I went down the rabbit trail and I was like, okay, if Patrick's telling me this and I have a lot of respect for you and your understanding of the world and your business acumen and all of that and judge of character, I'm like, okay, listen, maybe there's something here. And again, I had other people, including friends who knew me for a long time, I'm saying after that Jesse Waters interview, dude, you should run. You should run. I talk to people about it.

26:12Campaign manager type of you. And they're like, here's the reality. You can run for a state rep seat. You're going to get two years. It's going to cost you. You're going to have to raise probably, I don't know, five to 20, depending on what seat you're looking at. And the entire time you're in that seat, you're fundraising for your reelection because you only get two years. You could go and run to be a senator. You got six years. That's going to be a$50 million raise at least. And maybe you have some success depending on where you're going, but you're still also like many senators. You're still kind of always in this cycle of staying in a reelection for the next to stay in that.

26:54And for a governor's race, you're going to need at the time the person that was advising me saying you're going to need at least 100 million and probably more than that, particularly if you're going to run in California. because Kamala was teasing that she was going to go run for governor of California at the time. And also on top of all of that, you won't be able to do business. You are not allowed to own and operate a business if you go into public leadership like that. And I'm knee deep in trying to raise money to build this thing, this vision that God gave me in Austin, Texas. And I've got investors and I've got partners.

27:26And I'm like, I don't feel the peace of God being like, this is the door you need to walk through right now. If that ever happens, if I'm out of place in my life and it makes all the sense in the world and God's really showing me, opening that door and throwing me through it, if that's my calling in this life to go be a public servant and a leader in that way as a legislator in some respect, I would gladly take that job on. I think for me, if I was, I'm not in this space, if I was an agent or manager or if I'm running the RNC, I would have a deep bench of people that I would start brewing now with a pipeline of 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

28:05And I'd be having one-on-one conversations with these guys, and I would say, Zach, I think you're a mid-2030s, but we've got a 10-year plan together. That's why I would do it, because you're young. You're 45, 46. You're going to be 46, right? I just turned 46. Happy birthday. You just turned 46. My birthday is in two weeks. So you just turned 46. I'm going to be 40. So I would say, I think it's a 10-year thing. And let's help you make some money and go through it. And the route's going to be different. I'm having a conversation with my son. I told him, I said, so what's the pinnacle? What do you want to do in life?

28:34And he gives it to me. I said, all right, so what other things? Because it's not going to be one, two. It's going to be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Okay, great. So let's identify what different ways we can go to seven. So we mapped it out. If you go this, then this, then this, then you can end up here. Great. If you go this, so we wrote the, so it was a clear path of how to get to here if that ever comes along, right? So there's many ways to go through with someone's background like yours. But I wrote this down here by you is I don't know who I was listening to, you know, on Trump as a talent.

29:10Trump is not necessarily the most likable candidate we've had on the Republican Party. That would be Reagan. On the Democratic ticket, it would be Clinton, two of the most likable guys, just freaking ridiculous, even more than Obama, right, on how likable they are. But Trump went against the least likable human being in the history of politics the first time, which is Hillary Clinton. No one likes her, including Democrats. And then he goes against Biden, and then he goes against Kamala, which was a terrible candidate and becomes where he's at. Reagan was likable. You're likable. This is a real crusade, real cause.

29:44because it wasn't a good business decision for you to tweet. You know, a guy who was a very famous bodybuilder, he told me all his views, and he says, this is what I want to do. And I asked him a question. I said, do you have FU money? He said, no. I said, if you tweet this and you don't have FU money, you better be ready to make money in this space because you're going to lose your sponsors. He says, what do you suggest I do? I said, I'm not telling you what to do. If you need FU money, go get some money, then do that. But if you go here, you're going to lose a lot of money, right? And he says, okay, I'm going to put it off a little bit Because it's a logical decision when you go through it.

30:15Listen, I get it. And there is a part of me that, again, I go back and I wonder, was this the right move? Should I have done that? Listen, I can't unring that bell now. No, no, I totally get it. And more than that, though, yes, you could wait to have a few money. Or you can look at what you have, recognize that you have a lot. I have a lot. I've had a lot. Which, by the way, does not mean that I don't need to. He doesn't have your kind of money. Right, right. Well, no, no. That guy I'm talking to. But I'm also, in many respects, because of my monthly nut and everything that I'm doing, I'm also paycheck to paycheck in some ways, right?

30:47I don't have the escape velocity that Elon or Joe Rogan or people have. I get that. But also, at some point, that can't be the arbiter of your decision-making. You have got to ask yourself, what is in my soul? And how much do I trust God that if I do step out and I do take a beating for this, which I did in some respects. I lost a lot of friends, which was probably the most disappointing thing about it, because these are some of my friends that I knew for 20 years that I thought, well, they know my heart. They know that I don't stand for everything that Trump does and says, but that I'm making a logical decision here, given the entirety of this team and what I think is going on in this country.

31:26And yet they still just like they ghosted. They were out. They were not my friends anymore. So I've taken an emotional financial toll in all of that. But you can't base it even on that. You've got to say, what is the truth that lay inside of me that must be spoken? Because if enough of us good men don't speak it, then we're going to get steamrolled one way or the other. And then we're all going to sit around like the well-meaning Germans in 1930s Germany that sat on their hands being like, well, you know, we didn't know what to do because that was very scary. And it's like, yeah, life is scary.

31:59The stakes are scary. But do you trust that God's got your back if you're willing to go take those steps? And I do at the end of the day. And again, people like the wonderful folks at Angel Studios and other producers and other films that I'm a part of, they have my back. And they see me for who I am. And some of them don't even necessarily agree with me politically. But they're not going to go so far as to burn me at the stake because they also recognize that we live in a country that should offer everyone the freedom of that speech. And not just the convenient agreed upon narrative that Hollywood might.

32:33Yeah, why don't we do that? I think, you know, for the audience to maybe learn, because you at one point supported Gary Johnson, libertarian candidate, right? Then you went to Marianne Williamson. Whoever the next libertarian. Was that Marianne? Marianne was, was she a libertarian-ish? Maybe it was libertarian-ish. Whoever ran as the libertarian candidate, that next one is who I voted for. Okay. I voted twice in a row for libertarians. And then it was, and then you went to Bobby and then Trump and then Thomas Massey, right? A little bit of Thomas Massey. Yeah, yeah. So walk me through. And now Zach Lane in Iowa.

33:06Very big on Zach Lane. Beautiful. So what do you believe in? What are your values? What are your principles that you believe in? I would say that, you know, predominantly it's a pretty libertarian viewpoint. I think that one of the beauties of this country and how our founding fathers set it up was in such a way that we had a very small government. We're supposed to have a very small government to handle things that only a federal government and what that would help in its interconnectedness over all of the states to be able to support the states. But I believe in states' rights a lot, a lot. Like, yes, there are some things that should be federal, but most of that should be determined, I think, within states.

33:48and I think that we were given this amazing opportunity in that which should have been 50 different petri dishes that all got to run their own little experiment within their own liberties and we would have learned a lot by this point if certain states were like oh yeah we're like you know no rules and we're you know organ right now and and you watch and everybody watches that lesson in real time you go oh maybe that's not what we should do as opposed to just outlawing things federally right out of the gate. Let these states do these things. You know, listen, I'm a big proponent of plant medicines, right?

34:20I think this is a huge thing and a wonderful thing that finally our administration and many people like Bobby and Joe Rogan and Brian Hubbard and Americans for Ibogaine, like, I think this is a really good thing. But it's been stigmatized since the 60s, all of this stuff. And we lost a lot of time in being able to do clinical trials on it because of these horrible, archaic federal laws that were against them. Had we allowed even just one state to go do that, we would have seen the miraculous power, healing power of these things a long time ago. So I believe that. I believe that, you know, we are all given our own liberty.

34:57We should be able to live the life that we want to live so long as our liberty doesn't affect someone else's liberty. It's really not rocket science. That to me is the, is the, it might not be the technical foundation of libertarianism. But from my standpoint, that is libertarianism. We should live and let live to the extent that then our liberty starts affecting other people's liberty. That's why I think, you know, when you get to certain hot button topics like pro-choice and pro-life, you know, I think one of the things that a lot of pro-choicers are unwilling to go to is that at some point in the process of separate sperm and egg to fully grown baby, there is another life in you.

35:37Now we can sit around and talk about when does that begin? Lots of people have different ideas about that. I'm not an expert in that. I've heard arguments that it starts at inception and arguments that it's only after, you know, it's viable at 23 weeks, 24 weeks, something like that. And anywhere in between all of that. But shouldn't we sit down with some really, really intelligent people from both science and spirituality and have our amazing, you know, charrettes and just be like, Hey, can we just all at least find some common ground in where we see life begins and that at that point, this is now its own life and therefore it has its own liberties and we must respect those liberties, right?

36:15That's a kind of governing principle within me. I think we need to get back to that. Very cool. Take me back to if I was in 10th grade with you, who was Zachary Levi at 10th grade? Oh man, 10th grade. I was, since, man, I mean, I was like five, five. Stop. Oh, yeah, I didn't hit my growth spurt until the summer between my junior, or my sophomore and junior year. So in 10th grade, sophomore year, I was still probably like, I mean, definitely five, five, six, maybe, yeah, yeah. I was a little kid. And I was an absolute spaz, theater kid, always entertaining. Ever since I was a little kid, I knew I wanted to be an entertainer and I entertained people.

37:02and it was a lot like I didn't have an off switch you know uh but fortunately I found theater and people like me who wanted to always be on and entertain people and oh there you go yeah oh boy oh boy yeah look at that kid um and uh were you in drama were you yeah oh my god like endlessly I was doing mom put you in or you asked no I that was all me my parents my parents god bless them I I mean, they were struggling with their own things, and they were not super involved, to be honest, like in my academics or my life. It was all stuff that I knew deep down in me. I knew at a very young age that God made me to be an entertainer.

37:42How old were you when you knew? Oh, probably four. Stop. Oh, yeah. What was the first time you entertained and you saw a reaction from people? Well, I don't know exactly, but I will tell you that around four, I think three or four is when most of us as children, when our awareness really comes online. You're aware and alive prior to that, but you're not really connecting dots. And around three or four, the movie really starts. And at that point, I didn't know what an entertainer was, but I knew things in my soul. Like I knew that a smiling, happy person felt good on the inside, right? And I knew that at that point, around three or four, oh, I could intentionally make someone laugh and smile.

38:19It doesn't have to just be this accident that I witnessed happening. I can ape or mimic or do a funny voice or, you know, do weird things with my body. And I could evoke these smiles and laughs from people. And it was the greatest drug ever. I mean, literally. Now, couple that with, I was the middle boy between two girls and a dad that wasn't there and really lost, you know, and needing to find attention to even satisfy my existence in this world. But God uses all of that, right? God redeems that. God used every one of those ingredients to make the soup that is me. And so I didn't know what an actor or entertainer was at that age, but I knew that I could do these things that ultimately were entertaining people to go and bring good, happiness, joy, elevation into the world.

39:09And then a few years later, I found out, oh, that's a thing I can do for a living. Oh, that's my job. I'm going to do that. When did you know that? How old were you when? I mean, I don't know. Again, as soon as my awareness put those dots together, Six, seven. I'm watching TV. I'm probably watching Three's Company and watching John Ritter tumble over couches and making people laugh and the laugh track of a sitcom. And I'm like, yes, I want to do that. That's what I'm supposed to go do. Yeah. Very cool. So three times. Now, were you a good student? Were you a troublemaker? Were you an athlete? Were you a?

39:41No. I mean, I was a little bit of an athlete. I played some Little League baseball growing up, and then in high school I was actually a springboard diver my freshman year because I used to have friends that had trampolines and I could do backflips and frontflips and all that, and then so somehow I got wrangled into being a springboard diver, which I did for one year. It wasn't for me. I really didn't like smacking the water from great heights. Not my idea of fun. And then my senior year of high school I tried out for the volleyball team and I played left bench. Like, you know, I wasn't, but then I played a lot of pickup basketball in my 20s and 30s.

40:15And, you know, I'm an athletic person, but I was never the athlete. I was the spazzy actor, theater kid for the most part.

40:25And as far as school is concerned, man, I, you know, this is one of the things that I really wish that my parents or there were people in my life that like really noticed me and saw me and invested in me. because I did well in school and I barely tried. I can memorize, as long as I was even slightly attentive in math class, for example, like in high school, I had the same algebra teacher my freshman year and my junior year for algebra two. And when I got back to her class, our grade was broken up into whatever, ever 50 % of your grade was homework that you did and the grades you got on the homework.

41:13And then 50 % was the testing that you did and the grade you got on the test. And, um, and I went to my teacher, I was like, how about, and I just negotiated with her. I said, how about I don't do the homework and I only do the tests because the tests are to test you on how well you would have done the homework. Right. And she's like, yeah. Okay. And I said, so if I just do the tests and I get an A on the test, then you could deduce that I would have gotten an A on the homework. And subsequently, if I got a B, then you could apply the B or C or whatever. And she sat there for a second. She goes, all right, Zach, let's try it.

41:49Because I could sit in class and I could watch what she did and I could just absorb what it was. I didn't need to go home and practice all of these algebraic formulas because I understood how the formula - She agreed. She agreed. So then I would come in and I would ace my tests and I would therefore get a retroactive A on my homework. And I loved that. That was somebody that actually saw reason in a way that I appreciated and recognized that, okay, you do understand this pretty well, and you're willing to gamble on. You made a good argument, and she bought it. Exactly. She's like, okay, let's do it.

42:17Yeah. Did she apply that to everybody else, or was it singular to you? No, it was just me, as far as I know. But again, like even when I was in sixth grade, we had an assignment to write a poem. And, brother, I wrote a fantastic – it was so good. The poem was so good. And I spent so long on it. It was, you know, what did I understand of poetry at that point other than you rhyme, right? And so I made this whole poem. It was called Ease, capital E, apostrophe S. And it was just all of these various examples of, you know, the chameleon hidden, the elephant scene, the Emilio Estevez, Charlie Asheen, like all of this kind of silly stuff, right?

42:52But it was so well written that my sixth grade teacher pulled me aside and said, where did you copy this from? This is plagiarism. I didn't even know what plagiarism was. She goes, you plagiarized this. I said, and by the way, this was a teacher that actually liked me. And I begged her. I'm like, I didn't plagiarize this at all. And then she called my mom and she said, your son plagiarized this. And my mom didn't believe me either. Stop it. Now, 100%. And I bring it up because it still is a sore subject for me because I know that God has given me a lot of talent. And along the way, had people actually been like, we can invest in this.

43:27You see things in a very different way. Did you ever go back and confront her or no? No. Never did. No. See, I had a situation like that with my ceramics teacher, Miss Rose. I went back and confronted her. Don't ask me why I took ceramics. I think it's great you took ceramics. Yeah, I went back and I had a great time. But I went back and confronted her and had a conversation with her, and as well as the counselor, Miss Kay. Like, why would you say this? And we just had a great conversation together. Do you know if she's still around or no? I don't know. Miss Morris, if you're around, Rose Hill Junior High, that was a teacher.

43:56Contact me. We'd love to see what happens with that visit. going back to family you're talking about mom and dad the role they played they weren't that involved with you at school they weren't kind of watching you to see hey there's something we have we can build on this maybe it helped that you went into entertainment or else you would have gone on a different route so I pulled up a data I thought about that by the way maybe that was God literally guiding you it felt unjust and it was unjust but then God used that because it's like yeah yeah but I don't need you to go be a poet I need you to go do this And obviously the world now knows that the creativity was real.

44:33It's not like back then it was ChadGBT and you went and got it from ChadGBT. Imagine kids today that are creative who everything they bring, the teacher's like, no, you got it from ChadGBT. I'm like, no, I'm really creative. Look at me. I got some talent. But you know what we pulled up? I said pull up the top 50 greatest actors of all time. And then I want you to ask which one of them had a good upbringing. Do you know what's the only one that came up with good upbringing out of the 50 actors? and we used AI, multiple AI. Paul Newman was the only one. Every one of them is like, well, Tom Hanks, but no, his parents also got a divorce.

45:07Paul, this, I know, but not this. Well, not this, so there was a following out. The only one that was kind of like a, you know, reasonable thing was Paul Newman had good parents, you know, kind of grew up. And by the way, I don't know if you know or not, Paul Newman stayed married to the same wife for like 50 plus years and, you know. He was a good dude. He was a good dude, yeah. So then I said, do me a favor. tell me the ones that are raised with phenomenal parents what do they end up doing and i want you to give me data so it pulled up the data brought up the study and it kind of went through everything on what happens if you have perfect parents mom in that state together forever everything is great says those kids typically end up becoming dentists doctors engineers that's their path yeah the ones who end up becoming business owners, sales, and entertainment had a very difficult upbringing.

45:55Yeah. Why do you think that is? Well, I mean, I think that the lowest hanging fruit in deconstructing that is when you don't get the love, the attention, the love, the support that you really deserve as a child and young adult, then you have a whole life in front of you where you're proving something to someone. So an actor, a successful entrepreneur, you have a chip on your shoulder, whether you know it or not, you are trying to prove your worth in this world because you are left with a wound from your parents where you did not feel like you were enough to get their attention to get their affection to get their investment right so to me that's that's probably the the root of it and then there's a lot of things on top of that um but yeah i would say that that's that's why you end up with people like myself or like yourself i don't know what was your upbringing like it's very similar to your i looked at yours very similar so i wrote a book a couple years ago for for business planning was called choose your enemies wisely and i said the people that i meet that do big things in their lives have three things in common.

47:08One, they experienced somebody in their lives that gave them unconditional love because you've got to know that exists. And then number two was they, and I shared this with Brady, Tom Brady, because he has that thing as well, right? And number two was one person in your life that no matter what you ever did, you could never win them over. Never. You can make millions. You can put the biggest movie. You can go. You're never going to win this person over. And the last but not least, you know, those who chose their enemies wisely. They chose the right enemy that brought out the best in them. Some people choose the wrong person, doesn't bring out the best in them.

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50:50What role did your mom play there? well unfortunately my mom she struggled her entire life with mental illness i mean and by entire life i mean i i think that as i think that mental illness really begins to manifest for men and women in different you know generally in different times of life but for both as you're getting into your 30s um you're the the the sheen and the kind of naivete of your earlier life begins to dole a little bit. And also the world becomes much more real. Your responsibilities in the world, your relationships, your ability, how deep you can go into those relationships all starts becoming very real, right?

51:37So my mom as a younger girl, I think, you know, wasn't necessarily, you know, struggling in her mental illness, but she was being traumatized heavily by her mother, my grandmother, as were all of her siblings. She was the oldest of five. And they went through lots and lots and lots of trauma, lots of different, mainly psychological abuse, but even some physical. And if you are someone who has dealt with that level of trauma and you are really unaware of, you're not unaware that you've been hurt, but you're unaware of how much that has damaged you and unaware that you, no one else, but you must be the one to go and heal it.

52:15And my mom wasn't. And quite frankly, you know, our parents' generation was a different generation. The idea of therapy, the idea of talking to a therapist was like a massive defeat, particularly for men, right? No, we've got to hold it together. You know, the idea of going to a shrink was a joke in most movies. Oh, so-and-so is seeing this shrink. It must be in a straitjacket, whatever that is. We have the benefit of being now in this world where mental health and mental illness is steadily and readily talked about as it should be and ways in which we can go heal from it. But my mom, man, she didn't heal from her trauma.

52:51She got into one marriage that was super dysfunctional, ended in flames. She had us three kids, but we grew up with my mom and not our dad. And she was slowly unraveling ever since she started to have her kids. And life was not coming to her terms. And she was creating a lot of chaos in her life and our lives and the lives of those around her because she was very deeply hurt and could not get anyone to see the pain. Did she ever share it with you or no? Well, yeah, she would talk about how our grandma was a horrible person our whole life and how our dad was a horrible person and how everybody was a horrible person.

53:28Was it a pattern with everybody or was some of it had some credibility? Like did she ever say anybody that was great to her or was it a pattern with almost everyone? Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, listen, I think it was a pattern with everyone, but there was also credibility, particularly with her mother, right? But then if you're an injured animal, you tend to either you completely cower and close down and you don't, you're a shell of what you were, or you become kind of ferocious, right? You're hurt inside like a dog who's been abused and they're in a corner and they're like, ah, you know, it's that thing.

54:06Yep. And so my mom was a lot of that and could only respond well with people that fully agreed with her, fully placated her. If anyone even slightly started to disagree with her, she could turn on them very quickly because what she learned was being wrong equated to not being loved. And that's a really bad trap to fall into. So that meant she would hurt people throughout her life and then people would call her on that. And then instead of being able to say like, you know what, man, you're right. I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry. She had no capability of doing that because it was death to her.

54:43If I acknowledge that I hurt this person, that I'm no better than my mom who hurt me. And I'm wrong and no one will love me. And so she would just stonewall. So it was really gnarly. And that affected ultimately every relationship she had in her life. Like her second marriage, that went down in flames. I mean, there was lots of just unhealthy. And then, by the way, adding to all of that trauma, unresolved, unhealed trauma, you start pouring booze and pills into that soup. That's a very, very, very bad soup. And ultimately, it's what brought on her untimely demise at 65. She drank herself to death.

55:2065. How old were you? 35. So this is 11 years ago when that happened. Do you remember the phone call? Yeah. Yeah. My uncle Mike called me and broke the news. I was sitting on my couch in L.A. when I lived there and cried with him a little bit. I mean, by the way, my mom and I hadn't had a relationship in 13 years at that point. Zero communication? Not zero because I was still putting a roof over her head and making sure that she had food and stuff. But, like, it was very complicated. It was very, very complicated. But I didn't have an emotional relationship. Well, no, no, I didn't have an emotional relationship.

56:02So there was reaction, but it happened in very strange different phases for me. I cried a bit with them on the phone. I immediately then, my uncle asked, you know, do you want me to call your sisters or do you want to? I was like, no, let me call them. And my older sister was up in Ventura about an hour plus away where we grew up. My younger sister was not too far away in L.A. And I texted them both. I was like, hey, what are you guys up to right now? I want to see you. didn't tip it. I wanted to tell them in person. My younger sister was able to drive to me and I sat her down and I told her what happened.

56:36And she just, you know, completely fell apart. She was the closest to our mom and the most like our mom. You know, and they mourned a lot. I didn't, I was very kind of, you know, together for most, and thank God I was, I was able to, you know, organize all of the funeral and the wake and, you know, all of, all of that stuff, the funeral home, the casket, like all of those things that you never, ever want to have to be dealing with for anyone in your life, even if you were hurt by them tremendously, like I was by my mom. But, but I still had moments where, you know, I probably cried for a couple of days, like two and a half days, and then there were no more tears.

57:17And then the funeral and all those things. And then it was only when I went to therapy in 2017, where I had to write a letter to my parents, telling them how I felt. Now, my mom, my dad was still alive at the time. My mom was dead. And it felt like, what am I doing? And I go to start writing this letter. And brother, it took me probably 10 solid minutes of weeping with a pen in my hand to this pen and paper, like not knowing even where to begin, even where to begin, and just weeping and weeping and weeping. And finally, pen to paper, and I just start going, and it's just releasing, like, how dare you treat me and your daughters the way that you did?

58:02How dare you do this? How dare you do that? Just pouring out of me. And I flipped the page, and it was completely God. Like I flipped that page and something literally flipped in my mind and in my heart and I put the pen back down in the paper and then what started spilling out of me is just lots of. And, you know, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, empathy, because I started to write, but you did this because I know that this happened to you. You abused us unwittingly, unknowingly in ways because you yourself were abused as a child and really messed up. And so it was an incredibly cathartic experience for me, but also was really the beginning of me understanding what it means to, you know, as the Bible talks about, what does it mean to love your enemy and pray for your persecutor?

58:57Like, what does that really mean? I don't know many Christians that actually practice that kind of stuff because they don't really understand it. And what it means, as far as I'm concerned, is recognizing that everybody is doing their best. And we hate to acknowledge that. We don't want to believe that the people doing very villainous, monstrous, dark, evil things in the world are doing their best. Clearly, they're not. Except that people that strap bombs to their chest and go blow up markets and kill innocent people, they think they're doing that to honor God. Right? They're wrong. You and I can sit here and absolutely objectively say that what they're doing is not honoring God.

59:33Certainly not the God that we serve or we believe in. That is not what God is calling people to do. God is calling us to love one another, get deeper into relationships, see the value that God imbues in every one of us as a child of God, I believe. But those people, since they were little, little kids, were impregnated with really bad lies and programming that leads them to that place. It does not absolve anyone. It didn't absolve my mother of her actions. But I was able to find forgiveness and mercy, recognizing that she was a product of her environment in the same way that we all are. So that was my mom.

1:00:05That was the journey that I had with my mom. You said 36. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, of course. Absolutely. That's why I love doing great podcasts because we get to talk about important things. Yeah. Long form, man. You know, it's different for a man to talk about the challenges with their mom than dad. And Bill Clinton one time said, you know, how, you know, there is no winning of talking about what your mom, you know, did or didn't do. Because some people are going to say, well, you know, what about your dad and what about this and what about that? But dad's is easier. Mom is more sensitive because it's your mom.

1:00:40You came from the womb. But also at the same time, when you're telling that story, 36 years old, when she passed, 35 years old, you were 35, 36 when she passed, 13 years ago to 22, did you ever confront her? You know, like in your teens, 18, 21, 22, did you ever confront and have a serious conversation? Oh, many. Oh, we had many conversations. I mean, the reason why our 13-year spread of non-communication that started, after many, many, many times of myself or other people in our family or friends confronting her, trying to get to a better relationship, but that requires two people being honest about how they may have affected each other and apologizing for that, which she wasn't capable of doing.

1:01:24And then one Thanksgiving, it was Thanksgiving of 2002, two and I had just started this tv show it was my first tv show it was a sitcom on ABC called less than perfect and I was like my dreams are coming true and my mom was calling me on shoot days I gotta go down and make a whole audience laugh and she's berating me calling me a bastard and a horrible son because I wasn't making her my agent or manager what she had no position doing because she felt no purpose in her own life and she's asking you to make her the manager make me it was crazy. It was crazy talk. And, but ultimately, so we, we weren't talking for a minute and then Thanksgiving came up and I went up to Thanksgiving and we got through Thanksgiving.

1:02:07And then the very next day I had to go pick up something that I'd left at their house. And, uh, and my mom, my stepdad and our family friend were there waiting for me to have like an intervention because my mom and I hadn't really spoken for like a month at that point. And I was like, guys, this is a bad idea. You do not want to do this right now. This is nothing good will come of this. And they all insisted and insisted and insisted. And I kept pushing back. I said, no, like we got to go talk to a therapist. This is not what we need to be doing right now. And then eventually I was like, fine.

1:02:37Okay, let's go. And what ultimately transpired in that conversation was I called my mom on something that was very real and very factual and it hurt her. And my mom, and I'll preface this with my mom was all bark and no bite in that her bark was her bite, she would say the most horrendous things to hurt you so that then you would essentially react or essentially feel like, oh my God, I must be in the wrong if this is how she feels, right? And she would do this throughout her life. And my mom, after I said these things, and again, I wasn't demeaning her. It was just like holding her accountable for this stuff.

1:03:17And my mom looked at me and she said, you know what, Zachary, I'd be happier today if you were dead. And I knew my mom's kind of modus operandi. And I said, and that she would say horrible things, but also she would immediately deny them. Two hours later, if you said, you said this, she goes, no, I never, I never said, I didn't. When is her birthday? October 6th. Stop it. Brother, another Libra. Yeah. Are you kidding? Yeah, yeah. A week after mine. Yeah. And by the way, let me just say for the record, and I've said this in my book and I've said this on my, My mother was one of the most incredible people.

1:03:53Like what made her up, she was dynamic and beautiful and charming and talented, like incredibly intelligent, incredibly intelligent. Could have run a Fortune 500 company, but because of her trauma, if you have a specimen with that kind of power, but you don't guide it, if you don't invest in it, if you don't help it to be a healthy version of itself, then that power gets unleashed in bad ways, right? And that's what happened with my mom. So she was very good at denying what she would say. And nobody was recording back then or whatever. And I said, mom, I looked her dead in the eye and I said, I want you for the record, just so everybody here hears that and remembers what you just said, say that one more time.

1:04:36And my mom said, and I could see, by the way, like it was really incredible and kind of scary because I could see the fear in her eyes. I could see her caught in her lie that she knew was a lie. She didn't want me dead, but she wanted to hurt me because she was hurting. And I was watching her process it in real time. And she looked at me and she just calmly said, I would be happier today if you were dead. And I looked at her and I looked at my stepdad and our friend and I said, I'm never going to be spoken in this way ever again. I love you guys. You pick the therapist and I'll pay for them. but I'm never, ever doing this.

1:05:15I'm not doing this anymore until we go get the healing we need. And it took like, I can't even remember, two and a half years for them to finally find a therapist, and we finally went, and I was good on my promise. I paid the therapist, but the therapist agreed with me, and then they said, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about, and all of these things. So do you think, did your sisters react to those kind of painful words the same way you did or no? Well, as I came to find out, so it was very, very eye-opening. When I wrote my book, Radical Love, which was, you know, really just about my falling apart, going to therapy, and what led me into that therapy.

1:05:56And a lot of this is in the book. I wrote the book, and then I sent it to my sisters amongst some other close people to read it through and give me their honest feedback on it. And my sisters were like, Zach, I don't remember a lot of these things happening. I don't remember being treated in these ways. And as it turns out, this is not uncommon. You have a very subjective, specific perception of your childhood, how you lived it, and what you were hearing and observing. that doesn't necessarily translate to all of the children. Now, some of that is age. Some of that is their perception of the exact moment that happened.

1:06:34Some of it is literally only happened to you, the way you were treated, and that they didn't necessarily pick up on, right? So some of it is absolutely corroborated by my sisters. And in other ways, like my younger sister, again, who was most like my mom, who was the baby of the family, she looks back on her life, and she's like, I had it pretty good. Like, I didn't really, I didn't. What's the age difference between the two? Two and a half years. Okay, so that's not a big age difference. No, not that big. And then your oldest sister? Two and a half years older. So two and a half older, two and a half young.

1:07:03Yeah. And do you have the personality of your biological father? Like, are you like him? I'm the mutt between the two. My older sister is like our dad. My younger sister is like our mom. And I'm like right in the middle of it. When are the girls' birthdays? When are they? My older sister is March 2nd. And then? And then my younger sister's April 20th. So I wonder if how much of this is how Libras, because words have a lot of power in our eyes. So when somebody uses words, we're more literal to be like, wait, you mean this? Yeah. Versus maybe others are like, ah, she's just pissed. I'm just moving on.

1:07:41It's not a big deal. Well, listen, like we were talking about before, I definitely think that there's validity to wherever you fall within the signs and the zodiac. And also the Enneagram, as we talked about before. I think all of those things are pertinent to how they were treated, also how they perceived their treatment, all of that stuff. Burning bridges. You know, we'll always hear about, hey, Zach, never burn a bridge. Never burn a bridge. You talk to super successful people, they'll say, listen, you better learn how to burn a bridge. You know, because sometimes there's going to be some moments.

1:08:12Was this one of those moments where you said, I got to burn this bridge with family or else my dreams are not going to become reality? it wasn't so much or else my dreams won't become reality it was although that was tied to it it's like if I don't if I don't put up healthy boundaries I didn't even really understand what you know what I've now learned about even the healthiest of boundaries at that time you know most people don't at 21 22 but I also knew that you can't let people just keep marching into your life and belittling you and saying horrible things about you and and quite frankly lying about me my mom and stepdad were very dishonest about who I was to everyone that they would meet for a long time in their own pain and what they were doing, right?

1:08:53But I knew that regardless of career and succeeding in career, I wouldn't survive. I wouldn't be able to just flourish as the human being that I was meant to be if I have that level of toxicity constantly being poured into my life. I know your stepdad wrote a letter to you or something like that. You're the worst. 40-page email. Yeah, 40-page email or whatever it was. 40-page email, yeah. It had a preamble. Literally, it said preamble and it had all these categories. He was an incredibly intelligent, is an incredibly intelligent human being. He's still around. I believe so, yeah. Okay. But you guys are not in contact.

1:09:24You don't communicate. No. Okay. Do you think that part about entertaining, would you come in and be like, let me see which mom is showing up today? Okay. I know which one it is. Let me adjust to you. Let me see who's showing up today. Yes. God. Yes. That's borderline personality. My mom was absolutely clinical. I mean, she was never, I think, clinically tested for it because she wouldn't go and do that. But from my understanding of what borderline personality is, she was 100 % borderline personality with some narcissistic tendencies. And so, yeah, and that means a borderline personality is she might wake up in the best mood ever and you could do no wrong.

1:10:02And she might wake up in the worst mood ever and you can do no right. and trying to adjust to this constantly moving target that, yeah, you're having to take on lots of different energies and roles as you navigate those very mine-filled areas of your life. It was crazy. Did that help you in acting? That's what I'm saying. I think probably. I think God uses all of it. And I think that my ability to have to navigate— Well, listen, and even if it didn't necessarily help me with being a better actor, although Lord knows it probably has, it helps you to understand other people that are borderline personalities and navigating that.

1:10:44And Hollywood is full of lots of very interesting and lost people. So, you know, all of it's, I think, a learning lesson for sure. Young men, you know, they nowadays, you know, you hear they're worried about getting married, you know, having kids, buying a house. It's a very different time of these guys, you know, or birth rate is the lowest it's ever been. Testosterone. Yeah, all of that, right? So what did you like when you went into the dating space about having somebody? I know you got a kid, right? Yeah. Building the family, all that. What did you say? You're like, there's three things I'll never do when I'm dating.

1:11:19You know, marrying somebody. You're having a serious relationship. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do this. did you have any non-negotiables? Yeah, I mean, I think for me, you've got to really rip the Band-Aid off and be like, well, who do you pray to and who do you vote for? Seriously. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I think that a house divided is no good for anybody. And it doesn't mean we have to have exact, you know, like Christianity is a spectrum of faith. There's a lot of different ways that people practice that or other religions that are still God-centric that, you know, are you praying to your creator?

1:12:03Do you have a humility to, a gratitude toward, and a trust in your creator? Like that is mandatory. I can't be living, I can't be in a relationship with someone who is living a materialistic life that's like, well, this is it, and this is done, and we're just out for ourselves. No, no, no, no, because I'm not. I need a partner like Maggie in my life who recognizes that I'm not about just serving myself. I'm about serving this world in very large ways. And then also then how do we raise our children? Those have to be things that we infuse into our child and hopefully more that we have. So, you know, philosophically, are you aligned?

1:12:46And I think politically you have to find some alignment because you have to, there are hot button topics that is like, how do you feel about these things? Because what's the point of us being so divided that if we go to vote, we're just canceling each other out? Or are we, and even aside from the voting, are we pulling in the same direction? Do we want to build the same world for our children and for other people's children? Do we want to build a better future? Do we see a better future as roughly the same type of future? That's what you need to find in a partner, 100%. Powerful. Okay, so in Hollywood, so this is one thing I always wonder myself.

1:13:24I'm obviously not in this space. Well, you're in this space adjacent. Adjacent. Yeah, adjacent media, but maybe not where the camera's watching for me to act and play part and all of that. I always wonder when I see patterns of, you know, Ryan Reynolds who did the movie with Notebook. Who was that with? Rachel McAdams. Oh, Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling, right? And then Ryan Gosling does it. I think he's with Eva Mendes now. Yeah, yeah. Or even Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, they do the movie, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And this goes by Humphrey Bogart went through it. A lot of actors, Elizabeth Taylor went through this where you go do a movie.

1:14:03In the movie, I am in love with you, the character, right? So for me to really get there, you know, it's for the audience to believe it, you've got to find a way to get into that state, right? and then to disconnect yourself and move on. What's been your experience when you're doing a role and you're in love with this person? Does it ever get to a point that it's so emotional that you can't get out of it? No. No, not for me. How do you disconnect? Well, I mean, I don't know. Every actor has different methods, right? There's method actors who literally just inhabit those roles and they want everybody to call them by their character name, all that stuff.

1:14:39I'm not one of those actors. I think that there's some techniques within method acting that are very helpful, like getting to emotional places and you know get putting that on screen um but i i try to only inhabit my character in the scene once those this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks gemini and chrome is here for Ready to make anything online make sense?

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1:16:57It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three month plan equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Default terms at mintmobile.com. Cameras are cut, then I'm back to being who I am. And depending on the scene and the gravity of the scene, like I might need a little bit more warm up or cool down from that. But I'm not, every time I've had an onscreen love interest, either, either and and these are confounding elements right either if there was attraction or something either they were in a relationship or i was in a relationship or we were both in relationships or something like that and so i wasn't going to fan that flame anymore anyway like that we're just professionals we're doing a job and it's enjoyable you know it's like okay we get to go pretend like we're in love and kiss or you know have this love scene or whatever it is um that's all well and good, but that's a job.

1:18:05That's I'm going there to do that. And, uh, and also, you know, like you don't, you don't piss where you eat. Like I, I saw so many onset relationships, particularly on television series, right? Cause it's to go and do a movie with somebody and fall in love in a movie, but then you're, the movie's done. So now you can just, you're either continuing in a romantic relationship or not or whatever but when you start dating somebody on a series and that doesn't go well and now you have to work with them every day for the next seven years or what like that's a headache I never wanted to find myself in so you know you just you got to be smart about all that stuff who who was it the show uh uh was it uh Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis that I don't know if they were dating I didn't follow the story closely or no on that 70s show they were just friends they were just friends but they loved they had a lot of love for each other and then years later on they reconnected and now they're married it actually looks like it's a perfect fit like when you see them you're like yeah that makes sense you know that that makes sense yeah when i watch it i'm like man this was so believable i wonder how you disconnect from this and to be an actor you have to have a strong imagination right to be able to tap into it how do you delete that and be like no this is just a job and go maybe that's why a lot of people you know it they end up you know with the person that they did a movie with maybe that's not everybody and for you you got a system that works for you um but for somebody from the outside i've seen some movies where i say i really believe these guys are in love yeah it's that it's that believable and listen sometimes they are and sometimes they are just in that moment because they're really good actors and they're able to bring themselves to that place emotionally and invest in that other actor in that scene in a way that as it translates through the screen, us, the viewer, are going, I believe that entirely.

1:19:56Do you think it's sustainable to be a regular actor and make your marriage work and still do these movies where you're falling in love with another woman? Is that sustainable long-term? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we were talking about Paul Newman. Listen, I don't know everything that Paul Newman did or didn't do, but they stayed together for 50 years, as you said. I mean, Jim Caviezel, and by the way, Neil McDonough, who's in Angel and the Bad Man with me, right? Yes, he has certain standards. He and Jim Caviezel both will not kiss a woman that's not their wife on camera. As far as I'm pretty, Neil for sure.

1:20:34I don't know Jim. Jim might kiss a woman on camera, but will not do sex scenes. Like he's not going to go, like it can be implied, and he's not wrong. You don't have to do some gratuitous sex scene. You can do something where initiation happens, they're kissing, and you cut to some beautiful sunset and you imply the next morning. What's that relationship with the director and the actor? What do you mean? Where the relationship, the director says, no, Zach, I want you to do this in the scene. You get to say, I don't want to do it? And is that pre-accepting the job? Yeah, no, no. These are all conversations you would have before you take the job.

1:21:06You don't take the job. If you read the script and it's saying they kiss, you see them in bed, they're rolling, you know, all that stuff. or even aside from sexual stuff, if there are things in a script that you don't like or don't feel comfortable with and you happen to be in a position where you have enough authority to make those changes like Jim would or Neil or myself at this point in my career, in the beginning of my career, you're taking what you get. You don't have the leverage, right? But as you can establish yourself and they are coming to you, they really want you a part of this film, then you have the opportunity to say, hey, I really like all of this, except I'd like to change this.

1:21:42I'd like to change that. And as long as they feel okay with that, then that's what you do. Certainly that's what Neil's done. That's what Jim has done. I've done that on plenty of things. Again, not specifically even with, you know, sexual content. Although if I feel like there's something in the script that is just being egregious and gratuitous for no reason, it's not serving the purpose, then I will absolutely have those conversations. Bring it up. I know at one point you didn't want to do Shazam, or I read it somewhere that Shazam maybe was not going to happen with you. I was given an opportunity to audition for the role of Shazam for the first film about two months before I ultimately got that job.

1:22:19And when I got the audition slip, the email saying, hey, we've set up an audition for you to audition for this role. I knew about the project. I knew about the character a little bit. And I knew that Shazam has a basically a doppelganger, a twin, but is the dark version of him called Black Adam. and at that point the rock had already been cast as black adam so i'm reading this i'm like they want john cena they don't want me i'm not the rocks twin you know um and i was also in a very dark place unbeknownst to me i was had all this really gnarly trauma and everything that was unresolved in my life and so i respectfully passed i was like they're not looking for somebody like me thanks but no thanks this would be a waste of time two months later i am now finishing the therapy, the life-saving therapy that I was doing in Connecticut.

1:23:09And even though I had told my team, hey, I'm off-grid, I'm getting some healing that I need, I get this email from my team saying, hey, there's this other role, this Notchazam supporting role, one little quick scene, no pressure, you know, we understand you're off-grid, but this came up if you want to do it, you know, whatever. And that day, it was a Wednesday, and I just had a breakthrough in my therapy where I could finally start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And I'm emailed back, and I said, when do they need this by? And they said, by Friday. Friday rolled around. I was feeling even better.

1:23:40I went to the gym. I came back. I was just feeling good. I was feeling much better about myself. And I was like, you know, whatever. I'll go do this one scene. I put it up on the dresser drawer. Hit record. Did a scene. Basically, it was by myself. It was like kind of a monologue. And I ad-libbed a little bit in it. Felt good about it. Sent it. One take. I tried to do another one. I kind of bobbled it. I was like, whatever. The first one was fine. Sent the first one. and then a few hours later i start getting my phone's blowing up and my team is like so here's the deal they love you for this but also they're saying they haven't cast their shazam yet and they think you could be their shazam can you get to la right now and i said no i can't i still have a few more days of the treatment that i'm in right now that i owe to myself so how long was the whole thing in connecticut three weeks okay yeah three weeks and i was just finishing that third week uh and i was like i can't i'm sorry like if they can wait then i might be able to do it next week if i everything discharges well and every all of my therapists feel like i'm in the right place how bad do you need this job at this time where you don't really oh i mean well i mean financially oh sure i mean the money that could come from that my career i was still working but i wasn't you know but even more than the money it's the importance of it it's the stature of it to go be in a DC Warner Brothers super titular role in a superhero movie, all of those things and what can come from that.

1:25:04But, you know, Hollywood was a big part of what put me in the place that I was in because of unresolved trauma that I carried with me into lots of unhealthy activities and relationships in Hollywood and a lot of abusive powers in Hollywood. A lot of producers or executives that don't value us, the actor and treat us, we're just like a cog. And how abusive that is and ultimately feels when you have all of this stuff from your own childhood of how you felt that way as a kid. And me railing against that. And I mean, you know, all of that stuff at Hollywood and the things that happened to me in my journey there.

1:25:40And that, you know, continue to happen on some level. But now I've done a lot of work to be able to navigate that better. So anyway, all that landed me in this therapy. So now it almost felt like, is this the devil? Is this darkness trying to rope me back in? Like, yeah, no, no, you've done enough work. You're good. You're good. Now come back here so we can beat you up more. And so I said, sorry, I can't do that. And then that ultimately led to them understanding that. And then me doing a meeting with David Sandberg via Zoom that Sunday. And on Monday we did a camera test, but I was still at therapy.

1:26:13We did it through Zoom on iPads. And then they called back out on that Monday and they said, you are a front runner for this job, but you've got to be back here by Wednesday to do an on-camera, like in-person camera test. And I prayed about it. I talked to this wonderful woman, Kate, who was like an angel on my shoulders, who was praying for me there the whole time. And we prayed together. This is still Connecticut. It's still in Connecticut. Was this a Christian retreat? No, no, no. Not at all. No, no. It was very clinical. I had like all these different modalities of treatment, a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, dialectic behavioral therapist, meditation therapist, art therapist, nutritionist, a life coach.

1:26:57I went to the gym three days a week, yoga twice a week, Pilates twice a week. Non-drug. This is not trying to deal with drugs. No, no, no, no. Not a rehab. This is not like the Betty Ford or whatever they got in Palm Springs or. No, this was like psychological healing space. space. And for what it's worth, at the time, this woman, Kate, who I was telling you about, is this wonderful Christian woman and an angel on my shoulders who was praying for me. Technically, she was not allowed to be doing that. In fact, she told me one day, she was driving me to one of my appointments and she said, hey, listen, I just need you to know that if, you know, the administration finds out that I'm praying for you, I could probably lose my job because I'm not technically allowed to do this because they didn't want anybody, any of these kind of companions that were a part of the program to be interfering with any of the therapy.

1:27:41And, uh, and I said, Oh no, please don't stop praying for me. I won't tell anybody, but I need you to be praying for me. It's one of the only things keeping me alive right now. She said, Oh no, for sure. And then we drove for a sec longer. And then she turns to me and she said, but also know that I would gladly lose my job for you. Wow. Which was like broke me. How old is she? I mean, she was, I don't know, maybe 55 at the time or something like that. Wow. So, and that was, God used her as a conduit of his love, as of a mother's love in my life that I needed so desperately in that moment. And to the credit of Privé Swiss, which is the organization that I worked with in Connecticut, to their credit, they, I wrote about all this stuff in my book.

1:28:20They saw that it helped me tremendously, and they have now restructured their rules so that if a client, if a patient does want prayer of any particular kind, they can receive that prayer. So kudos to them for seeing that it was something. Why is the prayer such a big thing? They just want to make sure that no one is overstepping bounds and interfering with the clinical help that you might be getting. So like, for example, if you've got a psychotherapist or somebody that's telling you in more clinical terms, like here's something that you need to be doing, but you've got somebody that might be, I don't know, overzealous in their own faith and they're like, we're just going to pray this out of you and you don't need to do that stuff.

1:28:58You don't want that. And that's not at all what Kate was doing. Kate was respecting all of the clinical help that I was getting. And simultaneously. Is she still there? I believe that she still does. Very cool. She still does work there. Very cool. Yeah. So it's interesting. We all have a Kate in our lives, right? Kate's got to know her sometimes. Yeah. By the way, is this your body or is this the body suit? It's both. So I put on. You look jacked. Well, I mean, the suit. So as soon as I got the job, I was working out five days a week, eating 4 ,000 calories a day for like two months and put on 25 pounds.

1:29:37They measured me for the suit before I did all of that. And there is padding and all kinds of stuff in there. I mean, obviously, my shoulders look like I'm like a 1930s football player. But your neck looks like that's your neck. That's my neck. That's your traps. Oh, no, 100%. You can't fabricate that trap or trap. No, 100%. But they also put the suit on top of it, which I really wish they did it because – Jack Levi physique Shazam. Yeah. But in the second one, they realized this was too much, and they cut it way down, and so it was much more my own physique and less, you know. There you go. On the very right, or that one, or on the very right.

1:30:12I mean. Yeah, that's a physique. Yeah. You're in shape. Yeah. That was the best shape I had ever gotten in. Is this the most money you ever made in a movie? No. No, no, no. I mean, they paid me all right, but it's not. This big didn't. Yeah, no. No, because I didn't, I didn't, from their point of view, I was, this was the biggest thing I'd ever done. You're lucky to get this job. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. And I was, by the way. Like, I'm very grateful that Warner Brothers, DC, New Line, my producer Peter Safran, David Sandberg, everyone involved. I'm very grateful that they saw in me what I was even struggling seeing in myself.

1:30:49And then they gave me this opportunity. And then we got to do it twice. What's the highest paid movie you've ever done? Three million. Three million? Yeah. Which movie was it? for Harold and the Purple Crayon. Wow. And that was how long ago? Oh, gosh. I don't know. We shot that in 23, 23, and then it came out in 24. So is this pre the comments about Pfizer or post? This was now post. This was now post, but I was already attached to the movie. Got it. But then we were in the past. I mean, bro, it was such a – it was so wacky. We were shooting this movie in the pandemic and all of the masking and all the things.

1:31:34And, you know, and I, it was just a nightmare. Nightmare. Three million. Interesting. You ever seen, you ever seen what, what's his name? Denzel Washington said when he was asked about his politics? No, what did he say? You never seen this? I mean, maybe. I've seen a lot of great quotes. Can you pull up this clip? Have you ever done anything with Denzel or no? No, I'd love to. Yeah, he's an incredible talent. He is phenomenal. And I think he's an incredibly intelligent human being. Oh, my God. Like that part of with Denzel. I don't know if you can find it or not. Is this the one? Yeah, go ahead.

1:32:11Have you seen this clip? I think I have. Let's watch it. Play it. Mr. Washington, you're here in D.C. during an interesting time with the transition in the White House. Just wondering who you wound up supporting in the election and why. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Fences. Fences. How about this? I don't know if you saw it. There's a fake news story going around. It got thousands of shares online. You saw that. And I just thought you might want to clear it up because people are confused. There's a few words that start with F and end with K. But that one ends with E. But it starts with F. Yeah, but it's too vague.

1:32:49You got to be specific right now. F, K, and E. What was the question? Well, that was the question. Who you wound up supporting in the election, presidential election. None of your business. None of my business? None of your business. Well, I'm only asking because the story was online, but that's okay. Let me ask you this. What issue do you hope President-elect Trump tackles? What's number one in your mind with the new administration? I don't know. You know, I'd have to be more informed to just say off the top of my head the number one issue. I'm not sure. Education, jobs, health. I mean, there's so many.

1:33:28I want to just ask you, though, about the issue of race relations, because the film touches upon that. Right now, under President Obama, over the last eight years, in your mind, have race relations? You can pause it right there. Are there a lot of conservatives that flat out will never talk about their politics in Hollywood? Oh, yeah. More than we think? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, listen, man.

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1:36:29I've said this before, and I mean it when I say it. Everyone's on their own journey. Everyone has to go with what they feel God compelling them to do. And also, at some point, we have to stand and be counted. We have to. We must. I believe that if every single person who actually held some conservative beliefs, libertarian beliefs, who voted for Trump but would never tell anybody that they voted for Trump or other conservatives in the past, if every one of those people actually stood and was counted in Hollywood, it would rock Hollywood. because everyone would be forced to acknowledge that they're surrounded by people that actually don't agree with all of the nonsense that they're spewing constantly.

1:37:17What happens, Hollywood becomes a really interesting echo chamber because everyone who disagrees with you just doesn't say it. So you think that you're surrounded with people that are agreeing with you constantly when you're railing on Trump or you're, you know, railing on Bobby Kennedy, You're, you're, you're doing all railing on Bush previously. People just keep their mouths shut. So then you, you as that more liberal person is like, see, everyone agrees with us. But there are so many people that reached out to me during the last election. When I was speaking out Instagram messages that I would get from various big names, some significant names.

1:37:50Yeah, man, some significant names. And they would say, thank you. I wish I could do that. I can't. Do you ever ask them? Why can't you? No, because I know why they can't. Because they're afraid. Of losing the jobs. Of losing the jobs. Yeah. But again, if everyone did it, I don't think we would. Do you think it's a 50 % number? Do you think it's a 40 % number? No, no. I would say there's a solid 25%. It's still a big number. It's a significant number. I mean, what is it? When it comes to psychology and moving trends, I think you only need like 3 % or something. Yeah, 25 is massive. It's a massive number.

1:38:26Yeah. easily 25 % of the industry, and I'm not even talking about like A-list names. I'm talking about like people, work crews. I mean, for example, some of my favorite people on the movie set are the stunt department, right? And just because they're badasses, like all of them are awesome. I don't know that I know a liberal stunt. Stop. No, I mean, I'm not saying they're all like diehard MAGA. I'm not saying they're all diehard MAGA, but because they're grounded here. human beings. They live in the absolute reality of life and death. Like they're working people. They're blue collar people. And they, and they're, you know, and they're into things like guns and motorcycles and things like that's the right now I'm not saying they're not liberally minded stunt people.

1:39:12There are, but I don't know a lot of them. I know a lot of people that in the, and again, that's not even just the stunt department, grips and electricians and customers. And like, there's so many different departments and very artistically minded people, but that are more libertarian or conservative, but they are silent. They are silent because they feel like they have to be because of the consequences that come with going against the narrative. And then they see somebody like me. And unfortunately, all it does is reaffirm that because I'm having a conversation with you talking about the blowback that I got.

1:39:48And so they go, oh, see, I mean, I'm grateful for what he did but if I did that you know and it's a shame man it's a real shame who was it Ricky Gervais who is doing the I don't know which award it was he says oh don't worry if Al Qaeda right now started a streaming service he would tell your agent hey let's get a hold of him see what they're offering right so do you think a part of his message was powerful because what he's trying to say is if this is how I took it if the market opens up and there's enough jobs being offered from both sides, you would very quickly be like, you know what? I can do a movie for conservative.

1:40:23What are you guys offering? $2.8 million,$3.9 million,$6.8 million? But there just isn't enough, which is good that you've got companies like Angel doing this. And also now, I just don't know if they're going to pay as much as these guys go. So the next thing's got to be these Angel Studio types of companies. Are they going to be able to compete to create a comp plan that pays the actors the types of money that attracts guys from... I just watched a movie from Angel recently, who's that big buff guy that hated Trump and said a bunch of things about... Oh, Alan Richardson. Yeah, yeah. He just did a movie, Runner.

1:40:56Was it called Runner or something like that? Runner. Him and Owen Wilson, yeah. Yeah, I like the movie, and he's not a fan of Trump, but Angel did this. So I'm kind of watching what Angel is doing, what direction they're going. I think maybe their plans long term is we got to find a way to, you know, make ourselves seem like we're also open to bring in other people. And I mean, the movie you were in, Tommy Lee Jones is in it. Yeah. You know, yeah. You got it. And Neil McDonough. But whoopie said something. You said something about Hollywood's not mainly conservative. She says, yeah, Hollywood is filled with many conservative.

1:41:29I think you even reacted to this if you want to play the clip. I don't know much about the Hollywood history. So let me school you. I was talking to you. We are. like America is. We're mixed. We're a mixed bunch. And sometimes it may seem like there's more Democrats, and sometimes it seems like there's more Republicans. But the truth of the matter is, very few people seem to bite it because they're Republican. John Voight, who is working. Dennis Quaid. Dennis Quaid, who is working. People who work, stop that. It's more BS. I know you don't know.

1:42:11I mean, Whoopi, I love you. I've met her a few times doing The View and whatnot throughout the past. And was, by the way, a huge fan of hers in her film career and her comedy. But I think that Whoopi is even knowingly being dishonest. How much she's knowingly being dishonest, I don't know. But if she was really, I think that unfortunately, the view is a perfect example of why this is not true. Who on the, if you have this, you know, it started as let's have all these different voices. The view is only left wing at this point. Every once in a while, they might have a host that holds some kind of a conservative line.

1:42:53But they get shouted down and they're this teeny little minority in that conversation. she's talking about by the way you know if you go back in Hollywood far enough there were Reagan literally you know there were more conservatives more Republicans that was fine that is not what Hollywood is now it is not it is simply not and to name John Voight and Dennis Quaid and then she couldn't come up with yet another name of someone who was vocally conservative or you know like that's because she can't name them because she doesn't know them because they keep their mouth shut because they know that there is far too much backlash that comes with that.

1:43:33There is. That's the reality. Clint Eastwood would be another one that you can't touch or do anything with. Yeah, but again, he's legacy. He's legacy, yeah. She's saying a lot of legacy names. Dennis Quaid, we had on here, phenomenal conversation with Dennis Quaid. Wasn't Dennis Quaid married to Megan Ryan? Was she? Meg Ryan, right? Yeah, she was married to Meg Ryan. She was also a phenomenal actor. She did a lot of great movies. But with the direction it's going right now, what do you see happening? Like, what do you think is going to be happening to Hollywood? Do you think the power of Weak and Controls?

1:44:07The other day I watched a movie. My dad said, you've got to watch this movie about communism in Hollywood. So I'm like, which movie is this, dad? So he says, just watch it. It was with Robert De Niro, and it was based on a true story. If you type in Robert De Niro communism movie, I don't know if you've heard of this movie. So the story was that back in the days, if you went to a communism, this is it. Yeah, guilty by suspicion. If you went to a communist party, Hollywood would oust you from making movies. And you have to kind of agree I'm not a communist or say bad things about him or oust others.

1:44:40And he says, I'm not going to be doing it. And he stopped getting jobs, right? So some of these liberals are like, well, you guys put us through this when we went to a communist party. Now we're doing it to you. Do you think it's kind of coming back and saying, guys, relax. You can't be bullying people like this. Do you think it'll ever get to a point that nobody cares? I don't know, man. Unfortunately, I think that we as a global society, but just like humans in general, we want retribution. We want comeuppance. Too few people want the pendulum to stop swinging. Most people want the pendulum to just keep swinging, but in your favor as much as possible.

1:45:23So like, yeah, they did this to us. So now we're going to get our revenge. Now it's our turn. The pendulum's in our side. It's like, guys, at some point we have to stop it. And if we do stop it, we all live a far better life. That's why I'm not about like, I understand things have been done here and done there, but we can either keep living in this absolute asinine, back and forth, crumbling way, or we can slow that thing down and let bygones be bygones and recognize that, hey, we, everyone was kind of doing what they thought life was at that point. You know, looking at something like as complicated as like reparations, for example, like looking at the United States and England as being these like horrible countries because they were slave owning countries.

1:46:15Yeah, everyone was. And by the way, it's not even over. There's countries right now in the world that are still about the slave trade. They're doing it. And the sex slave trade is one of the biggest of all. The United States and England started the charge and the U.S. was not too far behind in eradicating slavery in this world. And yet somehow we're culpable, we're responsible generations and generations down the line to somehow figure out how to pay reparations to people that were sold by their own people into this. Where's the reparations coming from Africa for the people that were rounding up all those Africans and selling them?

1:46:49Where is that? Right. So it's so complicated if we're just, well, that's the lever. That's the pendulum. It's got to swing our way. Or we go, hey, listen, a lot of bad went down. Everyone was involved in that. If anything, we as the United States did a pretty good job of trying to eradicate it in the world, following England's lead. Let's try to find peace now, here, right now. But that only comes with slowing down this pendulum swing. So I don't know. In Hollywood, what do I think is about to happen in Hollywood? Alternatives like Angel Studios and others, and hopefully what I'm building in Austin, will be alternatives to the broken system that is Hollywood.

1:47:28And won't just cancel people. Look, Alan and I have very different views on Trump, right? Maybe some similar, but clearly he's very vocally anti-Trump and people who vote for Trump and all of that stuff. But I'm – and also Runner is not an Angel movie in that – Angel didn't develop it. Angel acquired it, and so therefore – and then they put it on Angel. And Alan and Owen do a great job in the movie, and it's an entertaining movie. Oh, I love that. I thought it was a great strategy that they did that. So what I love about Angel in all of this is they could have, as Mormon conservative people, been like, well, we don't like what Alan said.

1:48:06So we're not. No. Because they said, no, that's just pushing the pendulum more. Let us allow people to come as long as. What I won't like, and I will give my opinion and thoughts on, is I had Bob Chapek on here, Disney's former CEO. He was on a couple weeks ago. I think when they went, we found a correlation, but between the amount of LGBTQ characters Disney started showing and their stock. This was it. I showed it to them. So this shows how many characters they got. The blue is the characters. And then the stock, you know, where the first time the blue is actually. Yeah. And so it's like, well, why did you guys do this?

1:48:43Well, this was a two year two year project. If they start trying to be woke, it doesn't matter what the company's name is. They're going to make a mistake. And I hope they don't because the temptation is there on how many people are trying to, you know, make sure everybody's happy. This thing went from being a half a trillion dollar company to 200 billion dollars. Nike. I don't know if you saw what happened with Nike. There were 261 billion dollar company. Nike. Today's a 50 billion dollar company because you wanted to go do Colin Kaepernick, Dylan Mulvaney, all this. We saw what happened with Budweiser.

1:49:12As long as they don't go touch that, bring any actor that you I don't even care if you bring a movie that Kevin Spacey's in. that any of these that's talent that's raw talent i listened to r kelly till today i don't listen to r kelly because i subscribe to the way he lived yeah he just you listen to his music like this guy makes some very good music michael jackson some of the best music but he was accused with a bunch of different things so it'll be by the way ai are you concerned about ai or not really you are concerned about ai so this is what i was going to lead into so what i'm what i'm building in in austin wildwood studios oh there it's on the screen so this is a vision the guy gave me a long time ago, which was, if you want to go make a better Hollywood, you have to go build an independent movie studio that is not just a studio.

1:49:56Really, it's like a factory town. Like, you know, like Hershey's, Pennsylvania. Hershey wanted to make chocolate. He needed a factory. Then he knew he needed homes for his workers, schools for their kids, clinics to keep them healthy, because the happiest bees make the tastiest honey. He cared about his workers, and he cared about his product, and he built a massive empire out of that that ultimately led to its own city. You know, it It started as a factory town, became its own city. This is the same concept. We're just the factories and making chocolate. It's making film, television, movies, or music and video games and anything where the arts and sciences come together.

1:50:26So it's an independent movie studio that allows people like me to have the opinions that I have, speak the truth that I believe I need to speak without punishment of being banished from Hollywood. And we can actually build community. There's residences here for artists to live full time. Schools for our kids, a farm for us to grow our own food. a self-sustaining common sense community for creation how many acres 75 right now but can you go a little bit lower just to see so 75 acres 75 acres any projects pending right now oh well listen i've got lois from angel studios wonder project kingdom story like if you build it we will come you know and right now we're looking for 15 million dollars in equity to go build our sound stages so we can start filling that with movies and tv shows i'm going to make one contact to you afterwards and i think they if they don't do it they would know somebody that would entertain the idea.

1:51:13But part of what I'm trying to do, and you can watch this video later or put this up, whatever, but I talk about it in the video. This has been a vision of mine for literally three decades. But in the last decade, what became very abundantly clear to me is that if we don't build an arc like this to protect human art and entertainment, AI is going to destroy all of it. Because very quickly, already right now, you can be one person who's really good at using Claude or these various AI agents, and you can make an entire movie just by yourself. Now, in some ways, that's very democratizing, right? It's very empowering.

1:51:47Look at us. We don't have the gatekeepers anymore. We, as one person, I can go build this. And I go, listen, I hear you. I think that can be really cool too. The problem is that you are taking a craft that has been done for, you know, well, at least 100 plus years that involved hundreds of people to make a movie. You are now instantaneously unemploying all of those people and killing all of those crafts. if we don't at least hold on to it on some level to know what it was like to make a movie where you had somebody made costumes and somebody who did lighting and moved cameras, actors, actual actors in these costumes, wearing makeup and being these characters, that'll become a lost art.

1:52:26And that's not even just film and television, but imagine 50 years from now when kids open up whatever version of a history book is at that point, and they're looking at these pictures and they go, hey, grandpa, what is this? And you go, oh, that's a guitar. So we used to have these things called musical instruments. And you would pick this thing up and you would hold it kind of like this and you would strum it. Because what's the point of even learning to play a guitar anymore if Suno and all of these other AI music agents are just able to, you just say, I want upbeat pop music that's got a country vibe that sounds like this and da, da, da, da, da.

1:53:03Go. Boom. done. Why does a kid ever even think to become a musician again if we don't protect the arts? And we must. I mean, we did with ballet. We did with the symphony. You know, pop art started becoming a thing. And we still said, hey, let's not lose these things. This is what made us human. This is part of our humanity. Like literally the category of these things is called the humanities. So if we lose the human in the humanities, then what do we have left? So that's part of what I'm trying to build here. And let me tell you, that's not just an altruism. I think it's a market opportunity. Because Patrick, when the rest of the industry is zigging into AI and everything is at your fingertips, right?

1:53:45I think there's going to be a demographic of the audience that is always yearning for the real thing. Look at vinyl records. Vinyl records is the perfect corollary. Vinyl records used to be all of the music industry. And then we got 8-tracks and cassettes and CDs and streaming. And very intelligent but just bottom-line driven people said, well, we're just going to keep doing the new tech. We're not going to keep making all this antiquated records and things like that. But some people who are a little touch in the head, like me, they said, yeah, but there's something special about this licorice pizza.

1:54:17And I want to keep pressing this. I want to keep making this because I believe that there will be an audience for this always. is vinyl record sales hit a billion dollars for the first time since 1983 this year because people want it. And the deeper we go into this digital rabbit hole, the more people are pushing back and saying, where's the real stuff? I want the real stuff. So at Wildwood, that's what we're intending to do. Hold on to the human arts and entertainment, the human arts in general, and provide people a product that is going to become, I think, very special, including live performance.

1:54:50We're going to have amphitheaters and have stand-up comedy and music and festivals and all of those things because in-person is going to, I think, skyrocket, is already doing that right now. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome.

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1:56:25Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's premium wireless is$15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk. Crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. A upfront payment of$45 for three-month plan,$15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com. Is your home wish list just sitting in your cart? Well, get ready to hit checkout because Wayday at Wayfair is here.

1:57:01Save up to 80 % off everything home during the biggest sale of the year. Whether you're refreshing the living room, upgrading the bedroom, or finally tackling that home project you've been putting off, now's the time to save big. Shop Wayfair's Wayday sale and get up to 80 % off now till October 26th. These deals won't last. Go to Wayfair.com today. Wayfair, every style, every home. No, I fully agree, and I love that. I call it Team Human, where we're going to go back to Team Human. I think there's going to be cities that are going to be non-AI cities. There's going to be restaurants that are going to be like, well, 100%, no waiters, just come and order your – some people are going to go like, no, I want to go to a restaurant where it's just people I want to talk to.

1:57:43I want to go to a waiter, a waitress. There's an Uber driver. I don't know if you've seen this guy that's blown up on Instagram. He rides with people, and while they're getting in, he writes a song and has a ice. Have you seen this guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He crushes it. I don't know if you have this or not anywhere. I cannot get enough of this guy. He does such a great job. He's hilarious as hell. And you'll notice the passenger's name is Moshe. Right. He'll say, Moshe just got in the Uber. And he's singing this song. the person's like, wait, what? How did this song? Have you seen these? Yeah, yeah, I've seen them.

1:58:16Connor, do you have to? And listen, I think it's entertaining. And also, that's kind of a part of the problem because he's using AI, right? Now, is this ultimately going to be the end of music? No, because we can - But it's a part of it. Yeah. I think we're going to go like this and I think we're going to come back. I think we're going to go to it. If you have one of them to show just to see what's going on, like he's driving the car. No, I've seen it. I've seen it. It's crazy. Yeah, okay, anyways. You can feel the audience like it or whatever. So last but not least, with the movie that you did.

1:58:45So, you know, Angel and the Bad Man, you with Tommy Lee Jones, with Neil McDonough. Neil McDonough, who's like a beautiful, brilliant new talent from Australia. So the story behind this, John Wayne did this. This was his first movie he ever did that produced. That he produced. Many, many years ago. Yeah. So tell me about the story. Tell me about how this happened. Well, ultimately, I was approached by the producers who said, hey, we're doing a remake of this John Wayne classic. It's now in public domain because it's old enough to now be in public domain. And we love this story. We think it's an evergreen story.

1:59:23This is a re-imagining of it. We're not trying to go shot for shot, tone for tone with John Wayne. I was never going to try to be the Duke. I am not. In the same way that he's not me, right? We're going to have a different flavor anyway. But now with modern camera techniques, modern directing, modern acting techniques, modern, all of these things, we can still tell a beautiful throwback Western with great messaging, redemptive messaging. I mean, it's ultimately who John Wayne played in the original and who I play in this one. Court Evans is a bandit outlaw whose, you know, his moral compass is very, you know, very sketchy, but he has just enough in him, just enough, like Han Solo or Flynn Rider, my character entangled.

2:00:07You know, it's like these selfish, you know, bandity ruffian guys that are charming and they have this thing about them, but then they end up in the circumstance where they get connected to the love of a good woman that changes who they are, that they see that there is something more to life than living it selfishly, that you can live more selflessly and bless people in that process. And it's a much more rewarding and fulfilling experience in this life. And that's the journey that's the journey of court and meg plays uh penny who it's interesting angel and the bad man it's almost like a double entendre in that you could see pen the character of penny and and and court as she's the angel and i'm the bad man but but really court becomes the angel and the bad man is neil mcdonough's character laredo um because he did very he did he's great And Tommy does great.

2:01:00Everybody does great. And so that's it. It's a beautiful story of redemption. It's simple. It's not overcomplicated. It's family-friendly. There's no gratuitous sex or violence or language. So it's got a real beauty and simplicity to it. Where was the shot? Santa Fe, New Mexico. Santa Fe, New Mexico. Got it. Which is a lot of... Westerns and yeah. When you were at Santa Fe, did you go to that church that a carpenter built, a 33-year-old man that built the stairs with no nails or anything. You've never heard of this church. I've seen pictures of it. I didn't know that was in Santa Fe. It's in Santa Fe.

2:01:36I'm talking about the one where basically a guy just showed up out of nowhere. Yes, that's in Santa Fe. That's in Santa Fe. Man, I got to go back. Let me tell you, it's a crazy place when you go to it. Like, yeah, a 33-year-old carpenter one day came, and he built these stairs not using a single nail and left and disappeared. Yeah. It's that right there, by the way. Yeah, it's amazing. That's exactly what it is. That's amazing. And that was my aunt, my dad's sister lived in Albuquerque and in Santa Fe. We would go to this place. And it's a fact. And by the way, John Wayne, fun fact about John Wayne is, do you know what high school John Wayne went to?

2:02:09No. John Wayne went to Glendale High School. It's the same high school I went to. It was class of 1925 or something. Wait, Glendale in LA. Glendale in LA. In LA? Yes, he was. You went to high school there? I went to the same high school, yeah. So you were 11 years in Iran. How long in Germany? 18 months in Germany. And then immediately over? Immediately, I come to Glendale, California. Wow. I went to Glendale High School, and they said, John Wayne went here. I said, no way. Yes. So he was the class president, John Wayne. Shocker. Shocker, yeah. He was on the debate team, which I didn't know that.

2:02:41He was on the debate team, and he played football, and I think he ended up getting a scholarship to USC. Yeah. And then, of course, later on he goes and becomes who he becomes. And the part of this movie that makes it special for the people that love John Wayne, love movies and love a good story, is this was the first film he ever produced himself, Angel and the Batman. And you played the same role that he played. Yes, but very different. Very different, yeah. And by the way, the accent, the way you were having the moments and who, you know, Penny is like, it's not Penny. It's Penelope. Mom comes in, come here, Penny.

2:03:15Go give me some water. You know, like I said, I watch it with the kids right before the Yankees game last night. And my oldest daughter, Senna, was glued to the screen. You know, my five-year-old daughter, they were watching the whole thing. We went, and then the ending is on what happens with Penny, how Penny has the inner bad side to want to defend what they stood for. And it was actually a very good contrast that you get at the end of the story. Yeah, thanks, man. Yeah, of course. So we're going to put the link below. I think the movie comes out Friday. October 9th. Yeah. Comes out October 9th in the theaters.

2:03:50We'll put the link below and, you know, the trailer for folks to go check out. Any other final thoughts before we wrap up? It's been a great conversation. Oh, man. Yeah, right back at you. No, I mean, you know, we got to love ourselves and love each other. And that's going to take a lot of work, but we're worth it. And everybody that we meet is worth it. Ultimately, I heard this once. It's the best definition of love I've ever heard. I heard it, I think, Rich Ross. No, who was saying it? It was on Rich Ross's podcast, maybe. But listen, it goes back to like Thomas Aquinas and all the way back to Aristotle.

2:04:22And that is to love is to will the good of the other. It doesn't mean you have to like them. it means that you want the best for their life. Even the people that are doing all of the ill in the world, we have to try to see them as God sees them, want their best, want them to turn around, want them to repent of the things that they're doing. And if we can do that, we can help bring them to that. If we're just going to stand in judgment and shame and evil and point fingers, then we're just as bad as the other side who's trying to do the same thing to us. We've got to break that cycle. We've got to stop the pendulum from swinging, and love is the way that we do that.

2:04:57To love is to will the good in others. In the other, yeah, yeah. Have you read the book Power Versus Force? No. That's your kind of a book. Okay. You'd love the book. Brother, this was great. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. Anytime. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye.

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