Podcast episode
Episode 372 – Your Industry is Broken. Are You Called to Fix It? | Zachary Levi
Actor, entrepreneur, and faith-driven creator Zachary Levi (Chuck, Shazam!) sits down with Justin Forman at SXSW to pull back the curtain on Hollywood, authentic storytelling, and his bold new venture: Wyldwood—an independent studio and intentional community designed to fix what’s broken in entertainment and in the way we live.
EPISODE NOTES
Zachary Levi didn’t just star in a movie about a 10-year-old girl who prayed over her land and struck oil—he produced it. Sarah’s Oil is the untold true story of Sarah Rector, a young Black girl in early 1900s Tulsa whose childlike faith turned 160 acres into the largest pure oil reserve in North America. It’s the kind of story Zachary has spent his career searching for: true, excellent, redemptive—and never preachy.
Filmed at SXSW, this conversation goes far beyond the film. Zachary opens up about the darkness he walked through eight years ago when he didn’t want to live anymore, the therapy that deconstructed and rebuilt his faith, and what he now believes about grace. He also unpacks the vision behind Wyldwood—his new independent studio and intentional community designed to answer a broken Hollywood, a fractured culture, and the AI flood rising around all of us.
If you believe that authentic human creativity, redemptive storytelling, and genuine community are worth fighting for, this conversation is for you.
Chapters:
00:00 What Zachary heard from God about Hollywood
01:27 Introduction: SXSW with Zachary Levi
02:19 Sarah’s Oil: The untold true story of Sarah Rector
04:51 She was 10 years old—and she took action
06:24 Childlike faith and the character arc of Burt
07:19 Why this story isn’t in the history books
08:00 Excellence over messaging: how faith gets into storytelling
09:15 The echo chamber problem and playing the long game
09:58 A golden age? How the church is returning to the arts
11:30 Kingdom Story, Wonder Project, Angel Studios—reasons for hope
12:58 Grit, tension, and the Tolkien model of redemptive storytelling
13:52 Zachary’s faith journey: from childhood knowing to adult Pharisee to amazing grace
15:30 Eight years ago: therapy, deconstruction, and not wanting to live
17:55 The identity trap: acting, entrepreneurship, and separating work from worth
18:52 The actor’s process: empathy, method acting, and Daniel Day-Lewis
23:09 The shift from actor to entrepreneur
23:42 Why he thinks he was built more as an engineer than an artist
25:30 Chaotic capitalism and the cost of bottom-line thinking
26:00 God’s call: ride the broken boat, then build a better one
26:24 The Wyldwood vision: factory towns and the Hershey model
28:04 Faith-driven history: Guinness, industrialists, and investing in community
29:14 What’s actually broken in Hollywood—and what Wyldwood solves
30:16 We’ve forgotten where we came from: co-labor, community, and the tribal model
33:35 Designing neighborhoods for connection, not isolation
35:00 Everybody wants to go buy land and build a community
36:28 AI is a biblical flood—and why that’s the reason to build
38:17 We were created to create: why the arts must be preserved
39:00 Organic food and vinyl records: the human hunger for the authentic
40:15 The irony of AI-generated nostalgia and owning your art
41:50 How to connect with Wyldwood and invest in return-on-impact
42:21 Next steps: Wyldwood, Sarah’s Oil, and closing thoughts
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