Did Zachary Levi Just Commit “Career Suicide”? Or Was Endorsing Trump a Lifeline?

Shazam! Star Commits “Career Suicide” — Or Does He?

When Zachary Levi stood onstage at a Sept. 28 rally in Michigan and endorsed Donald Trump, he declared it an act of “career suicide” that would end his chances of working again in “very, very liberal” Hollywood. The crowd ate it up, applauding the 44-year-old Shazam! star for his sacrifice to the MAGA cause. But in L.A., there was more than a little head-scratching. Not because Levi was endorsing a convicted felon and adjudicated sex offender — the anti-vaxxer actor has done weirder things than that, like supporting Robert Kennedy Jr. for president — but because lots of folks here had assumed Levi’s mainstream career already was all but dead. His latest big-screen venture, Harold and the Purple Crayon, was one of the year’s biggest box office duds, and his 2023 superhero movie, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, had one of the worst openings of any DC theatrical release. “When he was cast as Shazam, it was literally his dream,” 

recalls an insider who has known Levi for years. “He thought this was his ticket to being The Rock or Chris Evans. But it didn’t happen for him, and he’s bitter about that.” In fact, Levi doesn’t even live in L.A. anymore; he’s now ensconced in a cattle ranch in ruby-red Texas, from where he’s recently been focusing on faith-based projects, like 2021’s Christian-themed American Underdog and — arriving in February — The Unbreakable Boy, in which he’ll play the father of a child with brittle bone disease. Indeed, Levi has leaned so far into faith-based productions, it’s beginning to look as if his endorsement of Trump — and his courting of a conservative fan base — was more a savvy career move than professional suicide. 

Manson’s Granddaughter Gets Her Day in Court

Charles Manson died in prison in 2017, but his offspring continue to stir up helter-skelter in California’s courts. Rambling Reporter has learned that a virtual parole hearing in August for Manson’s onetime right-hand man, 82-year-old Bruce Davis, was interrupted when a woman named Sophia Arguelles turned up onscreen (post-pandemic, many California parole hearings are held via video conferencing), claiming to be a journalist researching a documentary on the 1969 slayings. “There haven’t been reporters at the hearings for years, and they used to be vetted months in advance, but this woman was let in,” recalls Debra Tate, sister of Manson victim Sharon Tate, who has been attending Manson Family proceedings as a victims’ advocate for decades. Shortly after the hearing, Tate discovered that Arguelles was actually the daughter of L.A. Realtor Daniel Arguelles, who has for years been claiming to be Manson’s biological son. “A grandchild is not responsible for a grandfather’s actions, but it’s a blood relative in the victims’ faces,” Tate says. “It’s disturbing.” Arguelles couldn’t be reached for comment, and there isn’t much info available about the doc she’s supposedly working on. But Davis — incarcerated for his part in the Manson murders of Gary Hinman and Donald Shea — was denied parole.

Guess Who Really Built Megalopolis’ Cityscape?

Folks are finding lots to loathe about Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. Its bloated plot. Its Guys and Dolls costuming. Its incoherent dialogue (was that Latin?). In fact, about the only thing that hasn’t been generating controversy — at least not yet — is the film’s striking cityscape set designs. Turns out the brain behind New Rome’s eye-catching architecture is Neri Oxman, the 48-year-old former MIT professor who was once rumored to have dated Brad Pitt and is now married to divisive billionaire and outspoken DEI critic Bill Ackman. In January, Ackman had helped push Harvard president Claudine Gay out of her job amid accusations of plagiarism, charges that boomeranged on Oxman, who had to apologize for citation errors in her own Ph.D. dissertation. Oxman’s made other recent headlines as well, including revelations that her MIT lab had been funded in part by donations from Jeffrey Epstein. Clearly, none of this mattered to Coppola, who not only designed Megalopolis’ futuristic city with Oxman but cast her in a don’t-blink role. As it turns out, though, most of Oxman’s performance wound up “on the cutting room floor,” at least according to her husband’s social media feed.

This story appeared in the Oct. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.