If you found yourself in The Nerd Machine booth this past weekend at New York Comic Con, you may have noticed a multitude of celebrity guests dropping by for impromptu photo and signing sessions with fans. These guests, as announced via the twitter hashtag #Smiles4Smiles, included stars such as Seth Green, David Duchovny and “Community’s” Yvette Nicole Brown. Actor Zachary Levi, who is currently in New York appearing in Broadway’s First Date, was behind bringing these guests together at NYCC to raise money for Operation Smile.
Can you talk about what Smiles4Smiles is?
Zachary Levi: “So basically, I’m an ambassador for Operation Smile and our main events called NerdHQ that we do at San Diego Comic Con, we make most of our money doing the panels that we do called “Conversations for a Cause“. But there’s a lot of time in between where celebrities might not be able to do a panel for us but they have time to do some photos for us or or do some signings for us. And by for us, I mean for the fans obviously. And I just kind of believe that, I don’t know, for me, you know I’ve been really blessed and…I make my money doing the acting gigs that I do and I love that I’m able to do signings and do photos and stuff and make it affordable– twenty bucks a pop–and you tell people that that all goes to charity, everyone feels a lot better about the whole process of it. So then I was just trying to figure out a catchy way to call it. So it’s Smiles, you’re smiling for a camera for Smiles, Operation Smile. And Signing4Smiles. So that’s what Smiles4Smiles is.”
Levi will next be seen in Thor: The Dark World and I couldn’t help putting a spoiler-free question to the new–taking over the role from Thor‘s Josh Dallas–Fandral the Dashing.
What’s the coolest thing about being an Asgardian?
Being a blond, I guess. (Laughs)
It was more fun being a blond?
It was! It was fun. It was different.
.