Laura Benanti Says ‘F— You Forever’ to Zachary Levi for Suggesting Vaccines May Have Killed Their Broadway Co-Star: ‘I Never Liked Him’

Laura Benanti may have led the Broadway revival of “She Loves Me” with Zachary Levi in 2016, but the actress certainly doesn’t share the sentiment of the title. Benanti opened up about the ill feelings she maintains about her former co-star this week on the That’s a Gay Ass Podcast, hosted by Eric Williams.

“I never liked him. Everyone was like, ‘He’s so great!’ And I was like, ‘No, he’s not. He’s sucking up all the fucking energy in this room. He wants to mansplain everybody’s part to them,’” Benanti said. “He really sucked everybody in with his dance party energy, like, ‘We’re doing a dance party at half-hour.’ I was like, ‘Good luck, have fun.’”

Benanti’s criticism of Levi reached an emotional peak when the conversation touched on their “She Loves Me” co-star Gavin Creel, who died in September at the age of 48. The Tony Award winner, whose Broadway credits also included “Hair,” “Hello, Dolly” and “Into the Woods,” died of a metastatic melanotic peripheral nerve sheath sarcoma. Speaking about Creel’s death on Instagram in October, Levi floated an unscientific theory tied to COVID vaccinations.

“I know that this is going to offend some people and make some people mad, and I wish it didn’t. A few weeks ago, my friend Gavin Creel died. He was 48 years old, and he was one of the healthiest people I knew. … You better believe that, with everything in me, I believe that if these COVID vaccinations were not forced on the American public…” Levi said before trailing off.

Benanti blasted Levi for using the topic of Creel’s death to spread vaccine misinformation: “For him to use Gavin’s memory — a person he was not friends with — to use his memory for his political agenda and to watch him try to make himself cry until he had one single tear, which he did not wipe away, I was like, ‘F—k you forever.’”