Zachary Levi Explains Why He Traded California for a Texas Ranch

Actor Zachary Levi says he left California for Texas because the Lone Star State let him live and build according to his own values, without the restrictions he felt were closing in on him in his home state.

Levi, 45, moved from Los Angeles to a ranch outside Austin in 2017. In a recent interview with Fox News Digital alongside his “Angel and the Badman” co-stars Neal McDonough and Meg Fraser and director Julio Quintana, Levi said the “great state of Texas” is “much easier place to live than a lot of the other places that I have lived.”

“I love California. It’s a beautiful state,” Levi said. “Unfortunately, I think it’s got a lot of issues and I don’t see those going anywhere.”

“Whereas in Texas, I think that their values are more aligned with mine,” he continued. “I appreciate that I don’t have to pay state income tax and there’s liberty. There’s the liberty to go do what I want to go do, which is, like, go buy a bunch of land and build a movie studio.”

“You can be a crazy person and go do that,” Levi added. “If Walt Disney tried to go build Disneyland in California today, I don’t think it would ever get done, you know, so it gives me the freedom to go live the life that I believe that I’m meant to go live.”

Levi is now building Wyldwood Studios, a $100 million film and lifestyle campus on his 75-acre property in Bastrop County, outside Austin. The multiphase project is designed as a hybrid production hub and creative retreat, combining soundstages and production offices with housing and wellness spaces. Wyldwood is expected to open its first two soundstages in 2027.

Levi has said the project grew out of his frustration with how the entertainment industry operates. “Ever since I started working in Hollywood and I saw how broken it all was, I felt very compelled by God to go build a better Hollywood — like a new United Artists kind of studio — where it’s owned and operated by the artists, where we can cut out all the middlemen, where we all can do really well, build a community,” he said.

“And then not just a place to work,” he continued. “People can live there, and kids can go to school there. And we have an organic farm, and, like, all of the things that I think everybody really wants these days.”

A Western about redemption

Levi’s latest project, “Angel and the Badman,” produced by Angel Studios, remakes the 1947 John Wayne Western of the same name. Levi plays outlaw Quirt Evans, Fraser plays rancher’s daughter Penny, and McDonough plays the marshal pursuing Evans. Tommy Lee Jones also stars, as outlaw gang leader Laredo.

McDonough said the film’s old-fashioned moral clarity offers something young audiences rarely see today. “I think nowadays — with the temptation of social media and what we look at and what we hear and what we listen to — who do we look up to as heroes anymore?” he said. “Especially for the younger generation, it’s really hard for them.”

“The younger generation who don’t really know Westerns so well, to go to a film like ‘Angel and the Badman,’ you see, ‘OK, the bad guy gets what he deserves in the end,'” McDonough said. “Where in modern day, the bad guy sometimes gets to go scot-free and that’s tough to really learn from as a kid.”

Director Julio Quintana said the story’s redemptive arc feels especially pointed in an era when public mistakes often become permanent. “In modern culture, in some ways, we actually have the inverse situation where it seems like we’re always — you make one public mistake, and it’s like your life is ruined,” he said. “Our media outlets thrive on downfall and self-destruction and things like that.”

McDonough has spoken previously about giving up alcohol in 2016, saying his wife of more than 22 years, Ruvé, told him, “it’s us or the bottle, you choose,” and he hasn’t had a drink since. “We all make mistakes,” he said. “None of us are perfect. We all sin, we all do dumb things, but every once in a while, you get called out and something might happen to make you think, ‘Hmm, maybe I should be a better dad.'”

Levi said he believes the film’s themes reach beyond the Western genre. “Because everyone knows deep down inside of them, they either have been redeemed or are in need of redemption,” he said. “It’s a human story.”