Actor Zachary Levi is best known to his over 600,000 Twitter followers for his lead role on NBC’s Chuck, which turned his everyday video game and pop culture “nerd” into a spy. This fall, Levi returns to NBC playing Luke Collins in Heroes Reborn. And he makes his annual pilgrimage to Comic Con International in San Diego, where the show will offer fans a first look in the cavernous Hall H.
But what separates Levi from the hundreds of other Hollywood film and television actors that will attend “The Con” is that he runs his own mini-convention called Nerd HQ. It’s a free event that takes place at the New Children’s Museum this year and offers four days of gaming, technology, food and drink, dancing, and Conversations for a Cause.
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“My whole life I’ve grown up playing video games, reading comic books, and enjoying all that nerd culture stuff,” said Levi. “I started going down to Comic Con with Chuck when we were invited to go do panels and Josh Gomez and I used to joke about it because we had always wanted to go to Comic Con and we just never got around to it. And then we ended up in a show where we’re basically both playing ourselves and that got us into Comic Con.”
Levi became a professional Comic Con regular, but as he looked at the landscape in San Diego, he didn’t see a lifestyle nerd brand that offered a place for fans, including those who couldn’t get tickets to Comic Con, to congregate, buy merchandise, and enjoy food and beverages.
“I thought that would be a cool thing to unify people in a certain way – fans of Star Wars and Star Trek and all these things we’re passionate about – and that’s why I started the Nerd Machine,” Levi said.
When Levi connected with the organizers of San Diego Comic Con in 2010, he was told the waiting list to get a booth on the convention floor was 10 years long. Around this same time, the convention was growing so large that companies were expanding their activations into the Historic Gaslamp Quarter across the street. He and partner David Coleman, who was the prop master on Chuck, launched Nerd HQ in 2011. The free fan event was actually born out of an idea to rent a bar for a day and serve as a place for celebrities to sign autographs and for the Nerd Machine to sell shirts. But the more Levi talked to his fellow actors about the idea, the more it snowballed into a four-day celebration of all things nerd – a nerd headquarters.
“We decided to add totally off-the-cuff, intimate panels that are unmoderated, where the fans get to ask whatever they want, and we livestream them to the world, so even if you couldn’t make it to San Diego you could still watch what’s happening,” said Levi. “We also eliminated the standing in line, wondering if you’ll make it in. You buy a ticket and if you have a ticket, you’re guaranteed a seat in that panel. We also keep the panels small, so you feel like you’re part of something special.”
As Nerd HQ grew beyond just a place to sell “merch” and a hangout for fans of pop culture, Levi couldn’t ask his friends to participate in these exclusive panels and make money off them. So he turned to the charity that he has devote his free time to as ambassador – Operation Smile – and all proceeds from the Conversations for a Cause goes to helping kids with cleft lips and cleft palates around the world. Each panel holds 200 people and each seat costs $22. To date, Nerd HQ has raised over $700,000 for Operation Smile and helped build awareness about their cause.
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“I want us to all be doing something that we feel awesome about, and that we feel like we are connecting with our fan bases,” said Levi. “And I want our fans to feel like they’re getting to connect with us, and make it all about something that’s bigger than all of us because then we all go home at the end of the day and you feel just a lot better. You feel like you’ve been a part of something that that’s much more special. I believe in what I like to call ‘conscientious capitalism,’ which is the idea of we can all make money and do well for ourselves in business, while simultaneously helping others along the way. That’s the balance we find with Nerd HQ. We put a merch booth in there and we hope by offering people essentially a free event where anything that they’re paying for outside of the merch or the food and drink that they eat there, all the celebrity interactions all go to charity. I believe that if you offer people something that’s for them with no strings attached, hopefully that breeds not just brand awareness, but brand loyalty.”
Levi sets a goal of raising $240,000 each year at Nerd HQ and so far his fans and friends haven’t let him down. He’s already raised $95,000 for this year’s convention before it even starts. He’s also consistently delivered an amazing line-up of celebrity talent, which this year includes his co-workers on Heroes Reborn, the cast of Hitman: Agent 47, director Joss Whedon, the cast of The Last Ship, William Shatner, the cast of Falling Skies, the cast of Colony, the cast of Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, and the cast of Supernatural.
For those who haven’t experienced San Diego Comic Con, Nerd HQ stands out from the overcrowded convention center and endless lines. It’s also one of the few free options that’s open to everyone who happens to come to San Diego. Levi can be found running around Nerd HQ day and night, interacting with the fans that stop by, helping to organize the volunteers who make things run smoothly, and in the evening, on occasion, busting a move after a long day’s work.
