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Fans reportedly want to cancel Zachary Levi—the actor from Tangled, for some recent alleged “anti-vaccine” comments that he made.
Actors and entertainers are in the spotlight and under massive amounts of scrutiny for perspectives, views, or statements they might make, regardless of their intent or even if the statement was misconstrued. This time, cancel culture strikes again, and it’s a formerly beloved actor who played the role of the fan-favorite vagabond, Flynn Rider, in Tangled. What’s more, it appears we’re not yet in the clear concerning Covid vaccine disagreements.
Zachary Levi and Mandy Moore perform ‘I See the Light’ from the motion picture ‘Tangled’ during the 83rd Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California/ Photo courtesy of Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Recently, the Tangled actor Zachary Levi made some comments that fans deemed anti-vax and spoke out to cancel the star. In a tweet where businessman Lyndon Wood shared that he believed pharma company Pfizer was “a real danger to the world,” Levi retweeted it, sharing he “hardcore agreed.”
Check it out:
Hardcore agree. 😐 https://t.co/goeEf5UQ5s
— Zachary Levi (@ZacharyLevi) January 29, 2023
Of course, considering that Pfizer is one of the most popular vaccine companies in the United States, many fans took umbrage at this and immediately criticized the statement. The actor has a movie coming out soon, Shazam 2 from the DC Universe, and some fans even questioned whether this was the right time to have made statements like this, in how it might impact the performance of the movie.
Here I was, actually kind of excited for your movie. But nah. I’m not supporting you now.
— Rasmus Rasmussen (@theprint) January 29, 2023
Notable here is that Levi’s tweet, rather than speaking out against vaccines, was sharing his critique that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer was set to pay $2.3 billion in a settlement for fraudulent marketing.
And noting this, yet others even pointed him in the direction of Mark Ruffalo, instructing Levi to “beg [Ruffalo] to help you understand how celebrities can be outspoken critics of corporate America, Big Pharma, and even Pfizer specifically without playing into anti-vax propaganda.”
Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at EPCOT, Walt Disney World Resort, based on the hit Marvel movie series/Courtesy of Disney
However, one voice seemingly shuts down much of the calls for cancel culture; that of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. In response to a reporter who asked Gunn about his stance on Levi’s Pfizer tweet and controversy, Gunn said,
“Actors, filmmakers I work with are going to say things that I agree with and things that I don’t agree with. That’s going to happen. I don’t have a list of things that somebody should say because of what I think. I can’t be changing my plans all the time because an actor says something that I don’t agree with…By the same token, if someone is doing something morally reprehensible, that’s a different story. We have to take that stuff into account. It’s a balance, it’s a modern world, it’s a different place.”
This is also not the first time Gunn has spoken out against the cancellation of an actor.
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