Levy is not sweating. Well, his manly hands are, but that’s only because—as he takes pains to assure me—he has just washed them in the restroom. No other reason for the dampness, he adds, smiling slyly. Gross.

Perhaps this is to be expected, coming from a director of such juvenile delights as Night at the Museum and Free Guy, his movie about a self-aware NPC (played by Ryan Reynolds) that became a surprise mid-pandemic hit. Levy is the big kid of entertainment—one entering, it seems, a kind of dirty-dad-joke era. As we chat, he tells me that directing a Deadpool movie, and specifically being around Reynolds as the Merc with a Mouth, has caused him to start working (a little) blue, both on set and off. See: that handwashing joke. “Holy shit. I am disgusting,” he says. “I’ll make jokes sometimes, and my wife and daughters are like, ‘Who are you?’ I just scream, ‘Blame Ryan!’”

As scapegoats go, beloved actor Ryan Reynolds isn’t a bad one. Levy, wearing a loose navy T-shirt and jeans, also comes off as so downright earnest, so Canadian, his shifts into R-rated territory feel less icky than refreshing. Not that Levy has ever been the type to stay in one lane. His new project, premiering November 2 on Netflix, is a four-part adaptation of Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize–winning World War II novel, All the Light We Cannot See; it promises to be pretty much the opposite of Deadpool 3. He has also made robo-smashfests (Real Steel) and romcoms (Date Night). And the ’80s throwback Stranger Things, of course, which he executive produces alongside the Duffer brothers and often directs.

Levy opens our conversation by telling me that he’s a musical theater nerd who became the man he is today thanks to summers spent at the paradigmatic theater-kid performing arts camp Stagedoor Manor. It shows. The man is an animated (but not sweaty) ball of energy. He has just wrapped the photo shoot for our interview at a hip warehouse studio across the street, and, as a first salvo, he remarks on the trendiness of the coffee shop I’ve chosen. “The likes of which this middle-aged fucking father of four” has never seen, he says. “Whatever neighborhood we’re in, let the reader know this is a bastion of cool.” Levy might not think he belongs here—but somehow, as the guy who always knows how to give the people what they want, he fits right in.

Angela Watercutter: How was the photo shoot just now? I always wonder what it’s like for directors to be directed.

Shawn Levy: I was acting a lot in high school and college, and the whole reason I started directing is I didn’t like having to feel self-conscious. Even at 22 I was like, “Oh, that’s going to keep me from being great.”