Zachary Levi Admits His Shazam! Costume Was Padded

Well before fans ever got to see the first official look at Zachary Levi in superhero costume for Shazam! there was one major topic of conversation thanks to set photos from the film: how much of the actor’s heroic physique was his own muscles and just how much was padding. The question about the Shazam! suit’s padding even reached a point where Levi took to social media to share photos of himself working out to show that he had, in fact, bulked up for the role. Now, though, Levi is opening up a bit about the muscles versus padding situation with the actor admitting on Twitter this weekend that the suite was a little bit padded.

On Twitter, Levi quote-retweeted a fan who noted that they were “still salty people thought it was padding”, with the “it” being Levi’s Shazam physique but his comment reveals that it wasn’t 100 percent just his muscles under there.

“I meeeaannn…it was a liiiiiitle padded,” Levi wrote.

To be fair, it’s honestly probably not really a surprise that there was at least some padding on the Shazam suit. Given the larger-than-life nature of the character having at least some level of padding — even if only to further define Levi’s actual muscles — would make sense from a visual perspective. Of course, Levi has never really claimed that the suit was padding-free, just that he had done a lot of physical work himself to get his own physique in heroic shape so that he could don the bright red suit in the first place.

Still, with the mystery of the Shazam suit’s padding solved fans can get back to wondering when word of a sequel will come, and they aren’t alone. Levi himself told people at a convention that he hoped the second movie would come out as soon as possible following Shazam!’s success.

“I know that I’m gonna have a conversation with my bosses pretty soon about what the idea is and where we’re going with the new movie,” Levi said at CCSP. “But all I really know is that New Line, our studio, and Warner Brothers, our parent studio, and DC, and our producers and executives and everybody who’s involved in all of the decision making, they’re all very happy with what we did. They want to do even better the second time around, and they are crafting a story right now as we speak about what that sequel is going to be.”

Shazam! is now available wherever movies are sold while Joker is still in theaters. Other upcoming DC movies include Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) on February 7, 2020, Wonder Woman 1984 on June 5, 2020, The Batman on June 25, 2021, The Suicide Squad on August 6, 2021, and Aquaman 2 on December 16, 2022.