It’s common, maybe even natural, for audiences to conflate actors with the roles they play. To assume, for example, that an onscreen action hero is tough offscreen too, or that a rom-com star is a real-life charmer. That blurring of lines is probably a sign that an actor is doing something right, but it doesn’t make the dynamic any less strange or confusing. Especially if the character you’re famous for playing is Jesus Christ.
Since 2017, Jonathan Roumie has starred as Jesus on “The Chosen,” a hit series that takes a prestige-TV approach to the story told in the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Neither piously solemn nor portentously heavy-handed, “The Chosen,” which was created by Dallas Jenkins (son of the author Jerry Jenkins, a co-writer of the hugely popular “Left Behind” books), instead displays snappy dialogue, tense interpersonal drama, unexpected humor and high production values.
That slickly modern style, which allows the show to appeal to a curious nonbeliever like me, is centered on Roumie’s warm and relatable portrayal, and it has helped the show become a gigantic success. To date, “The Chosen,” which is available for streaming on Amazon, Hulu and other platforms and will return for its fifth season next year, has been watched by more than 250 million people. All that positive attention has nudged Roumie, a Catholic, toward being a kind of faith leader. At public events for “The Chosen,” he can be swamped by fans looking to, as it were, touch the hem of his garment; he gets asked to deliver high-profile speeches at faith-based events attended by thousands; and in the online world, he has a partnership with the prayer app Hallow, where subscribers can hear him read scripture and lead meditative reflections. It’s safe to say these opportunities were not on his radar before playing the son of God.
Roumie, who is 50 and was struggling in his career before landing “The Chosen,” is well aware that he’s in an emotionally and psychologically complicated situation for an actor. But it’s also a situation that — he believes, anyway — is all part of a greater plan.
What conversations did you and Dallas [Jenkins] have initially about the kind of Jesus that you wanted to show? Because your Jesus is very different from Jim Caviezel’s in “The Passion of the Christ” or Willem Dafoe’s in “The Last Temptation of Christ.” It’s more contemporary-feeling, more colloquial. What we have, that all those other portrayals didn’t have access to, was long-form storytelling. You’re seeing the nuances of his character, his quirks. Nobody ever wondered, well, what would it be like to crack a joke with Jesus, to have a glass of wine with Jesus, to see him dancing at a wedding? Because if you’re human, laughing and joking and frustration and the entire spectrum of emotions are part of the human journey, part of the struggle. He went through all of these things that we do, so that we would have somebody to relate to as we’re going through these trials ourselves.
Before “The Chosen,” maybe scuffling is too strong of a word, but you were a jobbing actor? Struggle-bussing.
How does it happen that a struggle-bussing actor makes it big playing Jesus? I think that the path to that is absolute surrender to a higher power. Because that’s what it took for me to get to the place where I was ready for an opportunity like this. I had moved to L.A., and I struggled for eight years. I was trying so hard to control my life, to control my destiny, to do the things that I thought needed to be done to have a successful career as an actor, and they weren’t working. I was on government assistance. That ran out. I woke up completely broke one morning. I didn’t see any way out. So I literally said: “God, you take this from me. It’s in your hands now. I’m not going to worry about it.” Then, three months later, “The Chosen” comes along. I thought, OK, I just needed to submit.
When I watch videos of you giving talks, you come out to a wave of applause — an overwhelming response. That sort of attention, combined with getting it for playing Jesus, strikes me as a potentially psychologically and spiritually combustible situation. Does it feel that way to you? No. I recognize that none of this is about me. I don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. When people react the way they do, and people yell out, “Jesus!” they’re seeing me as the face of the guy that they’ve had this response to while experiencing the show. Psychologically they know I’m not Jesus, but they want me to be the next best thing. I, of course, cannot go anywhere near that reality. But that said, if I believe everything I believe about my faith, I’m in this position for a reason. I was cast as Jesus and somebody else wasn’t. God only knows why.
The thing that I don’t understand is how you separate the idea that, as you said, you’re nothing, you don’t matter — Dust in the wind.
But then you also feel as if you’ve been put here for a reason. Those seem like contradictory ideas. How do you reconcile them? I guess it is kind of hard to make that distinction. Yes, there’s a sense of mission, but the mission is about Jesus. I was just in the Philippines, and it was nuts, man. I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re so intense, and they were giving me stuff and little articles and notes and things. So I’m playing this character that people, for the most part, already love. They have a relationship with him. Then I come in and I sort of fulfill their idea of who that person is. I’m also one of them, in that I have a relationship. A lot of fans know how I feel about Jesus and God and faith. So all of that combined, I think it’s the reason for my career. If I believe in divine destiny, it’s that I was meant to play this character at this time and place in history.
So you go to these events, and thousands of people are cheering. You are also asked to speak at the National Eucharistic Congress, or a commencement address at the Catholic University of America. You spoke at the March for Life in Washington, last year. These demands on your time and on your being, do you feel as if you’re being asked to give more than you have to give? It can be draining. The rigors of travel alone. But then, human interaction: If I’m meeting you at one of these events, oftentimes they’ll have V.I.P. groups. Certain people get to have some one-on-one time — but there’s 700 of them. That takes time, and it takes energy. A lot of the time it’s emotionally charged. Better or worse, that catches up with you.
Is there a particularly difficult encounter that comes to mind? I was at a conference in a stadium of about 40,000 people. I came off the stage, and shortly thereafter I got to the little greenroom where they had us hanging out. Security comes into the room and says: “Hey, there’s a lady outside who’s got a child in a wheelchair. She wants to know if she can say hello.” I came outside, and I met the lady and her son, and she was already overwhelmed. She then went on to tell me, “Our favorite episode is the episode where Tamar” — one of the characters — “lets her friend down on a stretcher in through the roof of Zebedee’s house, and Jesus heals him and he can walk again.” And she says, “I just thought, wouldn’t it be great if the same thing happened to my son?” And I said: “Yeah, that would be amazing, but I gotta be honest with you, as far as I know, I don’t have that gift. But I would love to pray with you if that’s OK.” I prayed with them for a minute, and they were so gracious and thanked me and I walked away. Then I burst into tears. Because I thought, Man, on some level, I must have let them down. But they know what I do. I’m not a healer. I’m not a preacher. I recognized that I can only be who I’ve been made to be.
There’s a way in which experiences like that call to mind a kind of category error. Because you play Jesus, you are put into positions that probably an actor shouldn’t be put into. Is there a part of you that thinks, This is messed up? I mean, the category-error thing is kind of funny, because all of us are not the sum total of what we do. I think you, by what you do as an interviewer and the questions that you ask and the things that you bring out of people, shed light on humanity in ways that other people wouldn’t know how to do. So in many ways, you have a gift for humanity that you might not even be considering in that light. You know what I mean?
Oh, I 100 percent agree with everything you just said! [Laughs.] No, but it’s absolutely true, because I don’t think we’re meant to be here to just eke out a living and get a job and maybe have a family, make some money and then die. Like, we have a conversation, and some sort of fruit comes out of that for somebody else hearing this interview, and all of a sudden the trajectory that they were on changes. They learn something about Christians or Catholics or non-Christians, and they have a better dialogue. That’s part of what we’re all here to do. I don’t give my political opinions out publicly —
Not quite true. Talking at the March for Life? Well, here’s what I’ll say about that.
Which, I should explain, is a pro-life, anti-abortion rally that happens every year in Washington. Yeah. It’s a pro-life rally. I was on the fence about speaking there, because I recognize that for so many people it is only political. For me, it is only spiritual.
Tease that out. So if I come to a conference like the March for Life and they want me to share thoughts, I’m thinking, Well, what do I believe as a Catholic? I believe in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception. For me it’s a spiritual thing that has been usurped and turned into a political weapon that divides people in such a way where they no longer see the spirituality of the issue. It becomes completely about right or left, conservative or liberal. I don’t understand it. So for me that wasn’t politics. That was spirituality. You can’t cherry-pick the aspects of your faith you like and dispense with the things you don’t like.
Why is abortion the issue where you chose to make your voice public and not other things central to Jesus’s teachings, like treatment of the poor? I mean, I do that. I was just in Tanzania and Rwanda visiting these children that I support and their families. So I’m doing as much as I can, and I weigh every opportunity that comes to me to speak on these things carefully. I also know that there’s only so much that I can give of myself. It can get really taxing at times. I’m trying to do things like take better care of myself.
I realize you just made a comment about peace of mind, but I have another question about the March for Life. Ha! Let’s see how this goes.
There was one moment in the speech when you were diagnosing the cultural landscape, and you said there’s an increase in occult imagery and depictions of witchcraft. You said, “You know it when you see it.” Can you give me examples? I think we’ve reached a point now in culture where seeing depictions and images of Satan and Satanism and demons and witchcraft and the symbols related to the occult are so frequent and regular that it’s so easy to become desensitized. If you go back a couple of decades, you would never see anything like that. I’ve seen it more, I think, in the music industry: demonic imagery and music videos and immodesty and all of these things that the youngest of our society are subjected to and shouldn’t be. They don’t have any idea that some of the imagery or symbols or words that are being used are, from a spiritual standpoint, really damaging and dangerous.
It’s funny, I enjoy the music of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest — I’m a huge Iron Maiden fan! “Number of the Beast”? I’m like, Well, I can’t wear that T-shirt so much anymore.
But it feels benign to me. It’s on the same level as science fiction movies or horror films. It’s entertainment. But the imagery from those bands in that time are different from some of the more modern — I think it’s much more graphic and sexualized. The display of sexuality and the dark images connected to sexuality are so much more blatant than they ever were 30, 40 years ago.
Do you think the iconography you’re talking about is the natural outcome of a corroded culture or the intentional result of darker forces? I think it could be a combination of a number of things. It could be how society at large has framed religion and banished it from visible culture. Even presidents would invoke God in the way that they don’t anymore.
It doesn’t seem that there’s a shortage of politicians talking about God. But not without a negative connotation. I’ll speak for myself: I had a conversation several years ago about the discussion of faith in the workplace. It was with a production member, and I know we shared a similar faith, and we hadn’t really talked about it, but there was a spark of a conversation that made me think, Oh, let me ask them about this. And they went on to carefully admonish me. Like, “You really shouldn’t talk about these kinds of things, because a lot of people are biased against Christians in this industry.” There was such a deep fear of being quote unquote “found out.” They had a sense of faith that it was not OK to express that. For me, that’s not OK. It’s not OK to be told I can’t practice my faith or express it. I’m not going around saying, “Here’s the Bible, do me a favor, just read that.” I’m not asking anybody to convert. I just live out my mission.
Let me ask a seasonally appropriate question. Do you have feelings about how secular Christmas has become? It’s hard to sort of see it being hijacked. I remember as a kid seeing these signs around churches: Keep Christ in Christmas. Especially now, any movie that comes out during the season that’s about Christmas, there’s no trace of Jesus in it at all. So it’s unfortunate. But that’s why guys like Dallas Jenkins are around, to give people alternatives. And then, however I can contribute, like with Hallow and the prayer challenge that we’re doing: Pray25 for Advent. We’ve got a number of different artists and musicians that are part of focusing on this piece of scripture, John 3:16, basically as a way to remember that, yes, Christmas is supposed to be joyful but at the end of the day, Christmas ultimately leads us to the cross.
You talked earlier about the idea of surrendering to God. I think that for nonbelievers, the idea of surrender can sound like a cliché, like when an athlete talks about “taking it one game at a time” or “giving 110 percent.” Can you explain more concretely about what it actually looked like for you to surrender? I think the simplest way to describe it is arriving at the position of where I recognize that my ability to control my destiny, my fate, my path, ultimately is beyond me. Yet I have to participate in the process of moving forward, of achievement, of trying to follow the direction that I believe I’m meant to go. When I came to that moment of surrender, I came to the conclusion that God had a plan for me. It’s like he said: “OK, I’ve given you these gifts, I’ve given you these talents, do something with them.” And I’m kind of like, “OK, let me go do something with them!” For me, it was in a moment of severe stress and anxiety and borderline fiscal destitution that I basically said, “I can’t do it on my own.” It was essentially a prayer where I said: “I want whatever you want for me because you know better than I do what’s good for me. Whatever that is, show me what it is.”
Are there ways in which your faith is still being tested? Constantly.
Give me the nitty-gritty. Where are you being tested? They asked St. Paul about that, and he never quite answered directly. He had a prayer. He’s like, “Lord, take this thorn from my side.” “Three times,” he said, “I asked the Lord to take this thorn from my side, and God said, ‘No, I’m not going to take that from you, because my grace is sufficient.’” In other words, he needed Paul to have this thing, this weakness, so that Paul would always depend on God. I’m not comparing myself to Paul in any aspect whatsoever, but we all deal with something. I’m a woefully flawed human being, but I’m trying to do the best that I can with the gifts that I’ve been given. And me even just walking the walk of faith publicly — it’s not something that I ever intended to do. It’s something that, during the pandemic, I felt pushed to do. I started praying live on my social media accounts. I thought, This is a career killer. Because it would out me as a Christian and then even more stringently out me as a Catholic Christian, which people find even harder to take.
There are a billion Catholics in the world. There are, but I don’t know that they’re all here in America.
The current president is Catholic. But it just wasn’t something I’d ever thought to do or felt that I should do. I’d always kept it separate. I just felt this inclination: You should do this because it’s going to bring peace to a lot of people. I’m just trying to go where I’m led, man.
This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations. Listen to and follow “The Interview” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music or the New York Times Audio app.
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