We are already several episodes into season seven. Season seven of Love Someone with Delilah. Who has been your favorite guests so far? I couldn't begin to pick one. They're all so different, so talented, so remarkable. Today, as we wrap up the month of February and hopefully all the nasty winter weather that it is dished out, from ice storms to flooding, I've got another fantastic guest setting down with me. He's starring in a just released movie called
The Unbreakable Boy. It's from Kingdom Story Company, the team behind Jesus Revolution and the Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and Lionsgate, the studio behind Wonder, So you know it's going to be good. It is full of positive messages, It's full of love. The film is about an amazingly upbeat, resilient young boy, Austin Lorette, who has every reason not to
be any of those things positive or resilient. When his parents, Scott and Teresa, learned that Austin is both autistic and has brittle bone disease, they initially worry for their son's future, but with Scott's growing faith in Austin's incredible spirit, they become unbreakable, finding joy, finding gratitude, and courage even in the most trying of times. It is an extraordinary true story about a father and a son learning together that every day can be the best day of your life.
Zachary Levi portrays Scott Lorette, a complex man with many issues of his own to overcome, who might not seem cut out to be the father to a special needs son, but Scott rises to the occasion, and Zachary's portrayal of him is splendid. Zachary is a Tony nominated actor as well as an accomplished singer and dancer. He starred in Harold in the Purple Crayon, based on the wildly popular children's book, and recently wrapped up production on Sarah's Oil
and the real life survivor thriller Not Without Hope. Zach is also set to star in the upcoming movie Hotel Tehran, a thriller, and free Fall, a rock climbing action adventure. You might recognize him from his roles as Shazam, or his portrayal of iconic NFL MVP and Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner in An American Underdog, or if you are a the marvelous miss Maslfan. You'll applaud his SAG Award for season two and three of that Emmy Award winning series.
Oh gosh, I could go on and on and on. This guy that talented and that in demand.
Okay, one more, how about his fan favorite performance as Chuck Bartowski in the NBC series Chuck. But today, zach is here with us to talk about his role as Scott Lorette in The Unbreakable Boy and to share some behind the scenes info on the making of this beautiful new film. Before we greet Zachary, let me give you some behind the scenes info on one of our fabulous podcast sponsors. Have you been looking for a milk replacement because you have dairy allergies or sensitivities. Well, I found
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casserole dishes. Visit Sherry'shazelcream dot com to learn more about this product, to read Sherry's story, and to place your order. It's Sherry's Hazelcream dot com. C h e Ris Hazelcream dot com. Use code Love twenty four for ten percent off your order. That's Sherry's Hazel Cream and Love twenty four. Zachary, It is so nice to meet you.
Right back at you. It's a pleasure to meet you too. How are you today?
I am wonderful. Thank you for taking the time to be with us. You're here because you have a new movie out, I.
Do the le Boy. It comes out February twenty.
First, oh, brilliant, beautiful movie.
Thank you.
We had a family movie night.
We got to watch a preview of Unbreakable Boy, which I can't wait to get on a DVD and watch it again and again and again. What an inspiring movie. And you were brilliant.
Thank you.
I gotta say it was kind of hard looking at you as the dad in the movie, as just a dude, like just a guy. Why because you're so cute and like all your other roles I've ever seen you in You're the handsome monk, you.
Know, you're the was I wasn't handsome in them, you were you were okay.
But a guy who's just.
Being a guy, you know, hitting on a girl at the jeans store and then a dad, Well.
There's a lot of those to represent, you know what I mean, there's a lot of those guys that you're not.
Not who look like you.
I got to try and represent him.
You did.
You did a great job, but there were there was a few parts that weren't really believable, Like what like just you're so good looking and you walk into a jean store with corny lines like I.
Mean, welcome to my world. I don't know what to do. Just a guy, according is who happened to hit some kind of a genetic lottery enough to have wonderful people like yourself call me handsome. But you know, also all of us. You have no idea how much spackle in Scotch tape goes into disk right here, look at mirrors, spolks, just smoking mers.
You you played the character of a guy with a good heart who just could not engage to save his life.
Really well, yeah, I mean, you know, certainly, even drawing from past experience in my own life, you know, I think that for the most part, I've I've been very engaged in life, but there's been a lot of times and I think this applies to all of us where we're struggling in our life. We're struggling accepting our life, where we're at in our life, who around us is
in our life, surrendering to all of that. That's what Scott, Because this is a real family, as I'm sure you know, this is a true story about a real family, and Scott wrote Scott Lorette wrote a book, The Unbreakable Boy, that the movie is based, and Scott was very vulnerable in sharing that journey because he's not He's not you know, a great dad or a great husband throughout a lot of their relationships. Because he was fighting and wrestling so hard with God that like, how can this be my life?
How can I have all of these things happened to me, all these curveballs, particularly having a child that's struggling through osteogenesis and perfecta and autism, and how we fight in all of that and wrestle in all of that, and he has to go to hell and back in order to recognize what he'd been missing all of that time, and loving himself for the first time. And let me
tell you I have. At thirty seven, I had an absolute mental breakdown, didn't want to live anymore, didn't know why, And thank God I had the ability to go to this life saving therapy that taught me how to love myself for the first time in my life. And so I was digging very deeply into all of that stuff
as I was bringing Scott to life. And hopefully, you know, as we all portrayed these real life characters, you're and they're still alive, right, You're you know, it's one thing to portray somebody, a real person who but is no longer alive. Nobody's holding a comparison, can't hold a comparison, but to play a real person still alive, and people can look at the you know, are you Are you emulating that correctly and fairly and authentically? And uh, and
I think we did. I'm really really proud of this movie.
You should be proud of the movie because it is subtly life changing. I think, I don't I don't know how, you know. I can only watch it from my perspective, obviously, but raising so many neuro divergent children and so many children who are medically fragile. Uh, nobody knows until you've walked that path.
And even if you've walked that path, it's it's a little.
Different for everybody in the case, every situation is a little different. And watching that movie and watching especially, I mean, I obviously relate to mom completely, But your character with such a good heart. Scott had obviously such a good heart, and he so wanted to do the right thing. But it seems like that was his motivation, was doing the right thing instead of doing what God was calling him to do and living the fullness of his purpose and
his life. It's like it was almost like he was an outsider, you know what I mean, trying to.
Well, yeah, and I would say though that and perhaps this is semantics, and forgive me if it is, but I do think just to clarify, like, and I wonder if it's not even so much like he was. He is trying to do the right thing, but it's like, but it's not the actual correct thing. He's doing what he thinks is the way you're supposed to do.
Life right, right, right right.
And so he's got all these expectations, as we all do. We all have these expectations. We come into this life and we get these expectations from our parents. So the rest of our family, community, society, whatever your various faiths, all have these expectations on who you are supposed to be there. And also if you check these boxes off, then that's the life that I'll get to go and live in the expectation that comes along with that.
And it never ever, ever ever works out that way.
No, never, we make plans and God laughs, I mean right, that's I think very true in a lot of ways. Not laughing at us, but laughing with us, oh.
Sometimes laughing in my case, very much laughing at me because I'm such a hardhead, you know, And God's like, Okay, that's the.
That's the flesh and the spirit. This is the thing that we're trying to balance and juggle all the time. You know.
I literally have these conversations with God. Least, they're becoming less frequent now, it's more like once a month, you know, a couple of times a year. But we have this conversation where He's like, Okay, let's just say I'm going to let you have your way for a minute. Do you really want to see how that's going to work out? Do you really, like, have we not gone down that path enough times? Delilah like, do I really have to
let go and let you have your way here? Okay, Okay, let's just see how this is going to work out. I'm like, no, no, no, I was only kidding about that.
I remember this pain. I really I kind of need you right now.
Yeah. There's almost no truer story in our relationship to God, to the universe, in this journey that we're on as human beings, which is that of where are you putting your trust and if you're putting your trust in yourself as if somehow you are going to control this destiny of yours, you're going to constantly be stubbing your toe and running into the running your shins into the corner of the bed, and tripping over and stumbling and sometimes
really hardcore failing. And which is not to say you still don't stub your toe and hit your shin and all that stuff when you're trusting God, because we're not perfect even at doing that kind of stuff either, But guaranteed, when we do have that kind of trust on a daily level, the amount of overwhelming peace that comes from that to recognize that, you know what, you just got to wake up, you got to show up, you got
to do your best. You got to have grace, mercy, patience, kindness, softness with yourself while still holding yourself accountable for all of your actions, because we are accountable and responsible, but having grace with ourselves through all of that. And then the better we get better, the better we get at that with ourselves, the far better we get at that
with everybody else around us. But it still all comes back to, are you trusting that there is something bigger than us that's pulling us in a singular direction, which I believe is to love. And if we can, if we can really trust that and really get just oled by God, like let's go, let's go to destination love, not love island. That's a whole other thing. We don't want to go to love. We want to go to the source of all that is and all that is love. And and yeah, we can't. You don't. We don't have
the capacity to get there ourselves. It's only in trusting in that process and how we get refined and grow and mature and evolve as human beings. It's all a part of it.
And then there is so much of that I was going to say in the movie. We saw that in the movie. We saw Scott trying to do it his way, trying to do as you said, maybe not the right thing, but the thing that he thought would would be acceptable, and then hitting the rock wall and realizing I'm an alcoholic, i am an absent parent, I have not even showed up for myself, let alone my wife and my kids.
And he had that epiphany and the breakthrough and came to understand that God didn't send him the special kid for him to figure him out, and fix him, but to enrich his life in your life. How how did you come to your faith? How did you come to this point that you're at now that you can look at me and say, we all have to surrender. We all have to surrender and let God pull us towards that ultimate thing, which is love, which is God, which is in the beginning, was the.
Word ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean the long and the short of it is. I mean, when I was like four years old and my awareness came online for the first time, I think all of us, it's kind of around three or four. Prior to that, we're bouncing in the walls and people laugh and we don't know what's going on. We're alive, but we're not aware.
We're not like really awaken. Around three or four, all of our minds starting to kind of like click on and the movie really starts and memories start to begin, and you're starting to kind of like put pieces together, almost like awakening certain things in your knowing that you that you've known before your soul even came down and inhabited your body. And one of those things was I knew that there was a God that loved me. I knew it. I remember having a very distinct moment. I
was like at Sunday school or something. I'm like three or four years old, and this adult is trying to explain God, and I'm like, I got it, I got it. I know exactly what you're doing. You go tell that kid like I know exactly what we're talking about. And that's carried with me. My faith has been with me my entire life, and it's been an incredible journey as any journey of faith is right, you know, it's it evolves and changes and strengthens and you learn and you're
humbled humbled. Oh my gosh, the amount of like, you know, me being so convinced and fired up in my faith in any given moment of my life and thinking, you know, yeah,
I got it, like we got it. And then it's like then you you stumble and you fall and you get humbled because God, almost more than anything else, is like, what are you doing, I'm God, be humble like you don't know anything, Like I think it was Aristotle or something is like the beginning of knowledge is to know that you know nothing, and that is such a massive part I think in a spiritual journey, you really have to stop letting go of this, like I got to
figure it out, Like you don't have anything. We have ideas. We have certain guideposts that have put us, thank God enough in contact with our creator to be able to begin to understand the infiniteness that is the creator of the universe, the creation of the universe, Like it's so massive,
it's so massive, so over my life. I'm now forty four, so forty years of being aware and walking in this journey has led me back to the only destination that I really think God genuinely is trying to lead every single person, which is back to love, which is back to love. We are conduits of God's love. We are examples of God's love. We are loved by God. We are children of God, and I believe every single one
of us are. And I think that the more we fight, that the more that we fight each other in this endless game of who's right and who's wrong, instead of just sitting and holding literally, could you imagine, I have the whole world actually just it's the most komba you ridiculous thing ever. But if we all just sat and held space for each other for a second and just been like, listen, I don't like you, but I know that. I know that you were abused. You were this, you
were that like that. The people that we don't like the most are often the people that have been most abused in this life. We've got to be able to hold space for that whole people accountable but them, see the gem inside of them.
Could you imagine if we could do that, if we could stop with the angry, hateful, destructive.
Me versus you.
I am right, you are wrong, I am left, you are right. I am black, you are white, I am straight, I am gay.
Whatever.
The division that's been fomented, created and amplified with like these massive speakers screaming at us that we should hate this person, or hate this establishment, or hate this whatever, and we buy into it.
Yeah.
Could you imagine if we could just stop for an hour, stop for a day, and do like you just said, just love one another.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I it's my dream. It's my and I believe that it's God's dream. I believe that it is the dream of all of this. It's that it's supposed to like it's the end screen on a video game of like if you were to go actually win the game, the only way to get there is by raising the vibrational energy of this place to that point where it just that light takes over. The problem
is that we are flesh and spirit. We're being pulled one way or the other constantly, and the ego, the flesh is not satisfied by love.
No, it's satisfied by dopamin.
It is healed by love, but it's satisfied, it's stroked by dopamine. The dopamine, but the feeling of winning, the feeling of superiority, right like, the ego is there to survive, where we're given this gift so that we can literally
survive this crazy world that we're in. But when it starts to affect your ability to see and think and feel and empathize because you're looking at people because you're being they're less then and you're like, yeah, because by somebody being less than you, now you were more, which then hits that that I'm surviving better. And so the
egos gets gets stroked by that. It's like, yeah, you are superior than them in this way or that way or and that creates the division and people want to keep that going because it's giving them this the self worth of some kind, but it's a hollow one. It's a hollow one.
We're here to talk about Unbreakable Boy. Beautiful, subtle but powerful movie.
Yeah, I think so. I think both of that is applicable.
Yeah. I mean, it'll move, it, it'll rock.
Yet, there's so many good aspects in the movie Unbreakable Boy, beyond the magical story of an unbreakable boy.
His spirit was not going to be broken.
Yeah, I think, and particularly from my character, the father, Scott Lorette. But I think it's kind of, you know, strewn throughout just thematically in the film. But like you're saying, it's it's it's it's so much about radically accepting and surrendering to the life that God has given you, and
we fight it. We fight it, we fight it, we fight it, we fight it because there's all these things that we we have, these ideas of what our life is supposed to be, and then all of a sudden, these expectations aren't being met and we're like, well, no, no, no, no, no, I wasn't supposed to. You know, with Scott and Teresa, right out of the gate, they get pregnant on their third date that they weren't expecting that, They didn't want that.
That's a curve ball coming at him at one hundred miles an hour, and like, all right, well, here we go. We're gonna we're gonna dive in, we're gonna figure out our relationship, we're gonna have this kid, We're to do our best. We're going to figure it out. And then the next thing they find out he's got osteogenesis imperfect a britlebones disease. That's a massive curveball. Okay, now we're whiffing at that one. And now all of a sudden, there he's neurodivergent. They test him and he's and he's
autistic on the spectrum. Big curveball, no idea. All of these just shattered expectations of certainly what Scott thought his life was going to be, what it was supposed to be, the right life, whatever that's supposed to be. But that's part of how God humbles us. That's part of how God brings us back to really trusting and being like,
you don't get to decide how this goes. I've got things I'm working on in you, in your soul that you don't even know you need to work on, and I am going to create the circumstances by which those things get worked through. And so Scott finally through his darkness and kind of rising up out of the ashes and radically accepting where he was and who he was, and it allowed him to really see the beauty in this relationship with his son and love him and not
try to fix him but embrace him. And it's so beautiful.
You got to be a part of this family, actual, the actual family. The movie is set how many years ago, like ten fifteen years it's the nineties.
Uh, yeah, let's see Austin was I mean the oldest Austin was in was? I think he got to be about eleven or so in the story, and he's not there about twenty years ago, give or take. I think if I'm doing the math right, because Austin, real Austin is thirty one now.
And is he as delightful and as loving and funny as the child Austin?
Absolutely?
Man, I fell in love with that kid.
Jacob Leval is such a talent, he really is. We love him. We were so grateful to find him because that's a very difficult role to inhabit, you know, particularly for a young kid, young actor who he's just kind of starting his career. But he did such a great job. Megan Fahee and Drew Powell and Amy Acker and Peter Facchinelli, Patricia Heaton who plays my mom, everybody did such wonderful work. The crew. I mean, we made it in the height
of the pandemic in twenty twenty. At the end of twenty twenty, it was it was wild, The whole thing
was wild. And then we were supposed to come out in the beginning of twenty two, February of twenty two, but because you know, a lot of people were still hesitant to go back to theaters, Lionsgate I think wisely, you know, said hey, listen, let's hold it for a second, and we'll wait until we feel like people are going back to theaters to go support smaller, you know, family film like this, because for a long time, you know, most of it was had the big, big tent pole
franchise IP in order to get people leaving home to go to a theater. I think this film, you know, because God's timing is perfect. I think it wasn't supposed to release three years ago. It was supposed to release right now. It's supposed to go and touch people's hearts exactly right now, exactly right now.
I think, right now we need that story and that hope.
More than ever.
You're right, it's exactly the right timing because even though it's a story about a singular family, it's all of our story.
Absolutely, and not even just if you are a parent or if you're a parent of a child with autism. You know, those are specific categories of human beings. But I think this film is really applicable to anyone and everyone because it's about the human sty that's the human story.
It's the it's the human dynamic of loving oneself, loving each other, elements of marriage and having children and children that are struggling with certain issues, and also just societal issues and all of these things, mental illness and mental health. You know, these are applicable to all of us on some level. So but I do I will say though, that I love that we have been able to bring a story to audiences that is representative of the specific
journey of raising a child with autism. I think that's the story that we don't really get. We don't see all that often, if at all. And I think that we have created a you know, tackled this subject matter with really tremendous heart and grace and authenticity and beauty and love and rit and love and all of it.
And I know that there's a lot, particularly based on my social media responses after, you know, posting the trailer or things like that, the amount of people that message me telling me that they themselves are autistic, or they have a child who's autistic, or they have a friend or someone in their family that's autistic, and that this they're crying watching the trailer. They're just they're so moved by you know, thank you for telling our story, telling
that story. So I think that there's very honored that we get to, you know, bring that specific to that specific audience, that specific demo as well.
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I have my youngest who is eight years old he'll be nine in a few weeks, who has a multitude of diagnosis. He was eighteen months old when I adopted him, and he is more energy than all of my other children added up. And there's been a lot of challenges, and I'm the kind of person that like, bring it on, bring it on, bring the challenges on.
I'm up for it. My husband not so much.
He was a Green Beret. He was a police officer. That pretty much says it all. There needs to be an order to everything, and with the child who is on the spectrum, there is no order to anything. And just when you think you figure it out, you realize you're not ahead of the game. You're so far behind,
you're not even on the right playing field. And the line that you say near the end of the movie when you have that epiphany moment, I said it earlier, but you said, you know, talking to your pastor you just realize that you've spent all this time and energy trying to figure out your son so you could fix him. I look over at my Green Beret husband, who was bawling, like ugly crying. I've seen this man cry maybe five times in our almost twenty year relationship, and he didn't
say anything. Seeing that movie. Hearing your declaration, which I know is a script. But I also know Zachary, that that was coming from your heart. It was he picked up the phone, he called his counselor, and he said, I need to come and see you. And everything has changed since that night. Everything has changed in his relationship with my son, everything that I don't want to make this about me or about our family, but I have to because what you do matters, and that story matters.
And if it can.
Matter this much to my son and change his life the way I know it's going to, I know that it will change other people's lives too, when they understand great and love and that kids that are unique or different, or people that are unique or different aren't a problem.
To be solved, but a soul to be cherished. So thank you, thank you.
I'm honored by all of those words.
And and I agree that I think this film has the power to I mean, as you just you know, said yourself, it's been already powerful in changing energy and dynamic in your own life and your own family with your husband and your son, and I I hope and pray that that is exactly what is downstream for far more audiences.
You know, we are so we are, so we're so woundly tight. It's so tightly wound, so wound, so tightly wound in so many aspects of our lives. Everything is this right on razor's edge and right on a cliff, and and in that it's very easy to lose a lot of these dynamics, you know. But I just I think that this is a really special movie. And I just, as with anything that I do, I hope that it resonates with people in a positive way, whether that's making them laugh or cry or both, or just shining a
light on something important. But this movie does that.
It does so thank you. Tell everybody that you worked with that. Delilah says, thank you.
Oh yes, Oh, it's being passed down the stream immediately.
I hope everybody listening go see Unbreakable Boy. It will break your heart and then put it back together again.
Amen. I love that.
Thank you so much. God, bless you, Oh, bless you too.
The Unbreakable Boy. It's about Austin who has autism and brittle bone disease. But it isn't about being autistic. We're having brittle bone disease completely. It's about life. It's about love, it's about family, it's about learning to accept the world one finds oneself in and the challenges that come with our life, all guided by the joyous, unconquerable spirit and zeal for life of a thirteen year old boy whose
unique outlook truly changes all of those around him. As happened in real life, Zachary Levi, Meghan Fayhee, Jacob Laval, and Patricia Heaton are part of a larger sensational cast that brings real life characters and an imaginary friend to the big screen. It's been in theater since February twenty first, and you can watch the trailer in Get tickets at unbreakableboy dot com and be sure to keep an eye
out for Zachary in all of his upcoming roles. While the temperatures are still registering low on the thermometer and the skies are still dark at a pretty early hour, I suggest ducking into a movie theater for a few hours with your favorite candy, a big tub of popcorn, your family, your hubby, your best friend. It is a great way to spend some time until the days are warmer and longer. The Unbreakable Boy is a top recommendation. I love this movie and it impacted our family in a miraculous way,