STARRING ROLE
“I did my audition tape with my dad,” says the highly likeable, ridiculously confident Asher Angel on getting cast as Billy. An actor since the age of seven, he’s already a Disney Channel star with a huge following on his own social media accounts. “I was in Utah. I said, ‘Dad, I’m going for a DC movie. How cool would that be?’ My dad played the wizard; he did a voice and everything. Next thing I knew, I came into Los Angeles for a test with all the executives. A couple of hours later, I got a call at the airport. It was everyone from Warner Bros and they were like, ‘Asher, you got Shazam!’ I started jumping up and down. Everyone was looking at me in the airport. Oh man, my mind was just blown away. It wasn’t until I got to Toronto that I actually believed it. This is my first big movie.”
A more remarkable story still is the casting of Zachary Levi as Shazam. Asked by his agent to audition for the role, he “politely passed”, saying, “Aren’t they looking for bigger names or at least bigger guys?” Months later, he sent in a tape for a smaller role, only to be immediately flown to LA and asked to audition for the title character. Fast-forward a week and he had the gig.
It’s not hard to see why. Best known (in America at least) as Chuck Bartowski in the action-comedy TV series Chuck (2007-2012), but having also appeared in Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (“A real feather in my cap, that one”), Tangled (as the voice of Flynn Rider) and Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok as Fandral, Levi often plays big-hearted characters. He is a physical match for Angel (“Their smiles are similar, their eyes are similar,” notes Sandberg). But, most of all, he’s a living, breathing, so-hyper-it-makes-yourteeth-hurt man-child.
“I’ve always been about joy!” says Levi, yakking 19 to the dozen and flashing grins and twitching restlessly in his seat. “I throw dance parties, my house always has an open-door policy, I still play videogames, I still read graphic novels, I love the movies, I play sports, I have a shit ton of energy. I have this Peter Pan-y thing!” OK, let’s test it: if you could say “Shazam!” right now and turn into anything you wanted, what would it be? “A big bowl of ice cream!” he shoots right back at the top of his lungs. “But then I’m eating myself, which would be weird. Anything?”
A nanosecond’s pause. “Just the best me. That sounds cheesy but genuinely I think that’s what life’s about.”
Yep, that’s a fit for a superhero who’s super-stoked to leap into action. “He’s not bummed out, going, ‘Darn it, I have to save the world… again.’ He’s going, ‘I GET TO SAVE THE WORLD AGAIN!’” yells Levi, grinning from ear to ear.