An Interview With Jesus - Jonathan Roumie From The Chosen

well welcome to the breakpoint podcast i'm shane morris and if you've ever started a project facing high expectations you know how unsettling it can be i think the worst for me has probably been parenting my three kids no matter how well you do you always feel like you've somehow messed up or fallen short but then there are the jobs where the expectations are just sky high where the standards are if anything humanly impossible to meet my guest today had the guts to accept exactly such a job jonathan rumi an actor known for shows like chicago med also plays the role of jesus in the recent vid angels series the chosen directed by dallas jenkins if you're a breakpoint listener you've heard us talking about this series lately after the first season was released for free via app this year aside from being the biggest crowdfunded media project in history the series has distinguished itself as a uniquely human down to earth take on the lives of the disciples but especially on christ himself and so much of that is due i think to the talent of this one man and i welcome him now to the break point podcast jonathan rumi thanks for joining me thank you shane for having me delighted to be here well i'm almost finished with season one here i just watched the wedding at cana and i'm i'm really surprised at how uh how different this series feels but especially your portrayal of jesus i like the way john stonestreet put it on breakpoint he said um that this jesus doesn't give airy pronouncements and stare off into the kind of middle distance he has a sense of humor and he's he's even got wit he sweats he gets cut in one scene uh he he looks right at people when he talks to them and kind of feels their emotions what was your thinking going into this did you kind of improv improvise your way into this jesus how did you come up with such a unique take well dallas jenkins the creator of the show and i have been uh working together we've been friends and working together for six years now i i started working with him six years ago in a short film that he did for his church's easter service and that was the first time i played christ for for him and and then i did after uh we did that film there were a couple of more projects of vignettes that he filmed for subsequent services over the next three years and so we really started to develop a shorthand for creating this um this version of christ that was uh relatable that focused on his humanity as opposed to um strictly his divinity and and so a lot of it was based on you know um this stuff in between the gospels that he would write there's there was a couple of scenes in one of the the last short films or vignettes that we did um where they're like two of the disciples i think it's uh andrew and like thaddeus are arm wrestling or something like that one night and um and uh i think andrew loses one i can't remember who loses and uh and i think uh i think yeah i think another disciple says i can't believe andrew lost to thaddeus and jesus says yeah even i didn't see that coming you know so it started to play with like this this very gently play with this the humor that uh like he can sort of you know um not make fun of himself but like start to explore like jesus's uh you know humanity is being somebody who clearly has has gifts who is the son of god uh but he's living as a human amongst all these uh friends these people that he meets and and how how do you humanize god you know how do you make him accessible and relatable um and humor has become one of the ways that we can do that uh and you know also just in between the scenes just relating to people like we that in the way that we're human in the way that we you know sweat and bleed and cry and laugh and and and um all of the things that make us human christ experienced uh except sin obviously so um the the bible the gospels don't necessarily tell us about all those human things because that wasn't the intent the intent was to really uh show christ as uh as human in in certain regards but mostly to establish the fact that this is god come down in human form and i think you know most of the people most of the gospel writers audiences were you know meant to understand that this man is the son of god and that was the focus so you know in between the pages of the gospel what did his life look like and that's kind of what the chosen attempts to explore um as reverently and um and biblically uh and humanly as possible well and that is one one of your goals right is to do it uh reverently in a way that's not sort of informed by the typical um the typical desires that animate a hollywood production and i know that's why dallas chose initially to crowdfund it so that you guys could have that kind of freedom is that right yes um you know making a a project like this especially when you're dealing with faith uh it's it's not something that most people are used to seeing uh done well and done right there have been very few examples in history uh mel gibson's the passion was one of the actually the most successful independent film in history and it happens to be a film about christ um you know but it was independently he funded it himself uh you take you know a serie like a mini-series one of the biggest influences on me growing up uh in this realm was the mini-series jesus of nazareth from 1977. in between then there have been a series of projects that i sort of hit the mark in places but mostly miss in other places um so it's been very hard to find um you know the the balance and and create and and you know in existing in history so i i think dallas was essentially you know committed to creating something that he hadn't seen before that he wanted to see and when you're dealing with i think the subject matter um it's not people aren't just running up to you and throwing money at you so you know his uh he tells a story where his expectations were if he was lucky he would raise 800 bucks and then when vid angel said no we think we could we could crowdfund this and then it ends up raising 11 million dollars over from over 19 000 investors all over the world it just sort of blew everybody's mind and um yeah i mean i remember watching once we had been greenlit to to go we started funding the first four episodes you know that took a few months and then once the first four were done and then we started showing trailers of the first four like the the back four episodes were were funded like two three times i don't know what the numbers were but like it seemed like it was exponentially faster once people saw wait a second this might actually be good um i want to get in on this and so it took maybe i think a month or you know or something six weeks to fund episodes you know five through eight so it was uh it was pretty incredible to watch it come together well and if anything that kind of adds to the pressure right i mean you've you've now gone from an expectation of a few hundred dollars to 11 million you're thinking all of a sudden well we got to do a really bang-up job with this right well you know i think the the good thing is that um when we had raised the first four million we greenlit the first four episodes um and then um you know once once you start getting the first few episodes done you establish the rhythm you you you kind of get the senses how the project is going and and even being on set from day one you kind of already really get this um this intuition that there's something different about this project there's something really special about this project and so i don't think any of us had any fears once we got on set i mean when you read this when we read the scripts we were like if this turns out half as good as the scripts are we'll be okay you know and uh i think it just with with many of us feel that myself i can only speak for myself and i know for dallas as well he's been very uh vocal about this but like the holy spirit has been present in this project from the beginning to you know now um and i feel continues to be even as it starts to as it's spreading across the globe um so it has taken what was on the page to what was shot and then has given it a whole other dimension and and made it better than any of us as people could attempt to make it jonathan you're a believer a believer yourself i understand i mean those of us who are listening uh those who are listening uh on the podcast can't see the icons behind you here but it's it's evident that your heart is in this in a way that an actor's heart wouldn't be if he didn't actually embrace the material personally how does that inform your portrayal of jesus um you know i was baptized as a baby and grew up in the face i'm a practicing catholic i started out as greek orthodox my family is from the middle east and from europe so we've had a number of influences and it's been a seamless transition to go from one to the other because greek orthodox and roman catholicism are very similar i think that has also set me up for ecumenism in my own heart and my desire to see a unity in in the christian faith um you know and i i host a um a prayer hour every day at three o'clock on my instagram live page um where basically we you know i just offered people the opportunity to pray with me some prayers that i know and uh it's been such a sense of um it's given me such a sense of peace uh especially during the pandemic and the opportunity for people to just disconnect from all the noise and the news and and all the stuff that induces fear um so i for me it's been something that while my faith has been with me all my life um through playing christ and especially with this project and and getting to um don his sandals so to speak for an entire season and spend so much time with him um it's it's given me a deeper desire to to get to know him further and just before we started filming actually like probably about three to four months before i had my own kind of um deeper conversion uh as a christian and um it's it involved you know just completely surrendering my life and my will to to god's will and um that i think was sort of the setup to be able to walk into this project to walk onto this set and be um and know that it's not you know this isn't about me this is about telling god's story and bringing it to the masses and hopefully uh at some point uh uh a majorly crossover audience you know going from the believers in the faith-based to being appealing to the secular and getting folks to ask questions and getting peaking people's interests in uh you know the greatest story ever told um and and a story that i think the culture effectually uh at large tends to try to shut down and shut out of of you know especially on the and on the media side so so thank you for what you're doing in offering an alternative to to um you know what the the media is typically putting out as far as the cultural how the culture goes well absolutely one of the features of the chosen that i really uh resonated with is the way it seeks to tell compelling and very human backstories for jesus first followers uh while also remaining uh faithful to the big touchstones of the biblical text you know getting back to home base every few minutes i noticed that during the climactic moments of each episode in particular the ratio of biblical dialogue to fictional dialogue it radically goes up it's like every other line is is from scripture do you find it challenging to kind of make that transition between the apocryphal stuff that that uh um dallas has has sort of dreamed up to make a compelling story and uh how do you guys um how do you guys avoid the the pitfall of just becoming an audio bible in those moments well i think um that's a great question uh thank you um i think i don't find the transition difficult because their writing is just so good and it uh you know there are very there are many many translations of the bible i probably got four or five of them at home myself um and i i love just hearing you know it's like any anything translated into a different language is going to depend on the translator some translators are more poetic others are a little more um literal to the original text so i think what dallas and ryan and tyler who write the show are so brilliant at doing is being able to blend the translations of the bible that they're using um with the vernacular that the casts you know the the cast members and the characters are speaking so that you don't notice this harsh like they don't all of a sudden drop in from to you know king james these from blacks you know talking streets of yo man listen but by will you know like oh you're like well wait a minute what's what's going on they don't do that so everything is is pretty conversational um and accessible as far as the translations that of the gospels and the scriptures that they're using i did notice there was only one section i think where these and those were used and that's where jesus is sitting down with the children out in the wilderness and he's uh he's he's teaching them the lord's prayer he's always like giving him before the disciples get it and he goes you know that kingdom come thy will be done and they're repeating after him but that's it otherwise that's the one yeah that's the one place i think you're right and uh uh and i think it's interesting because when you read you know in in the gospels themselves there it's it's not as fleshed out as the prayer as we know it um it's it's much more condensed i do i um occasionally i'll recite a version of the our father that uh uh a priest friend taught me in in reconstructed first century aramaic um and and it's based on those you know the translations of of the gospels um not so much the prayer as it's derived as we've known which which again i think um sounds like a king's king james version which is you know just become the standard i think to sort of it's interesting with prayers because if you start changing up well-known prayers there was probably and i never talked to dallas about that but there was probably a very specific decision to to use the standard version of the prayer versus something that might have been closer to what he would have actually said my guest today is jonathan roomie who plays jesus in the chosen of the minis miniseries that's just uh uh finished up its first season on vid angel and is uh well in in production for the second season i believe about the life of the disciples um as they join in jesus story you're listening to the break point podcast jonathan another thing i love about the series is how as we reach um the climactic moment of each episode the there's all this payoff if you will where the fictional lead-up and all the moments that we've watched in the lives of the characters thus far um they they go naturally into the the reports we have from scripture of what have of events that happened and then the dialogue makes sense and every little word is just like boom boom boom you know and i think the um my favorite example is probably the call of simon peter you know he comes in from this night of fishing we we've met him as this is person who's become an informer on fellow jews because he's in financial trouble and he has to you know get out of debt with the romans and the tax collectors so uh so he's a man in desperation and he spent the night out there casting net after net after net and he's just got um he's got nothing left he comes in he thinks he's about to be arrested and uh and jesus says well you know cast one more just go back out a little ways and cast one more and i love how it it almost appears he's in the shallows there in the most pointless idiotic place to try to fish and but he says okay you know what i'll humor you i'll cast one more and he does it and of course we all know the rest of the story i love that seamless transition there and the payoff are you guys consciously um trying to do that trying to bring new life into the the moments we're so familiar with in scripture yeah i think uh yeah there's i mean there's so much to to what you just said there that like i had all these um you know behind the scenes moments kind of kind of flashing into my brain as you were uh describing that so um you know there's so little in some of the pages of the gospels where uh there's so little to kind of go off of for instance when simon is fishing all night and he catches nothing and then he goes out again at the behest of of christ and you know it's like well what would make a guy that's fishing all night um want to just do that one more time and then what would make him after he has this miraculous catch like how could he just yeah just just just completely turn his life around so what they did was they you know they they try to um deconstruct from that moment going backwards it's like well what you know how do we build up to this point where he has no choice but to follow christ because this is such a momentous occasion in his life this is such a a a a huge turn of events in his life that of course he's going to go follow him now because if if we didn't have any understanding or an idea and of course all of this is just supposed we don't know for sure that you know that he had any issues with taxes but we can we knew what people's that people were heavily taxed at that time we knew what their concerns what their issues what their troubles what the oppression was about during jesus time so based on all of that like what could have been the most compelling story compelling way that for a man like simon who was kind of surly and rough and tumble and a fisherman and you know a guy that basically carries a knife you know what would get you know something like him to completely turn to or to follow a rabbi you know when he was a fisherman you know because fishermen normally just don't go following rabbis first of all to be chosen by a rabbi that's mind-blowing in and of itself for a fisherman to be cho you know it's usually um they're looking for more um educated people that want to be rabbis not fishermen so um so i think dallas and his team like they they're constantly looking for the they're asking the questions how does this happen how does a person have this conversion of heart in this way and just finding the most plausible um you know biblically suggested ways to be able to do this and uh and i think that's why the when we actually have the miracles happen in the gospels it's because we spent so much time building something that's believable that we can all relate to as viewers we can relate to owing taxes we can relate to you know oppression in our own lives in certain ways we can relate to loneliness and and confusion and stuff so um yeah they're they're literally mining the human heart and applying it to these stories um where they just weren't written out for us we don't get all those details we don't get the biographical details as cs of any of these right um you know the cool part is that something like this happened not this you know probably not this exact scenario but these people really did have backstories they really did have motivations they really did have motivations for you know making the reasons for making the decisions that they made even when they seem like flash and irrational decisions like dropping your nets and following this this rabbi you see that as well in the scene where mary magdalene is uh healed of her demonic possession which is something that's only alluded to in the gospels but now we we see it portrayed where she's constantly trying to repeat this uh this passage from isaiah i believe and and and it it says that um you know i have called you by name right and then the first thing jesus does is he calls her by name and her name is virtually forgotten she's known by a different name at this point it's a prostitute and a uh this demonically possessed woman and then he just repeats the passage to her and she knows and there's this massive payoff now to what uh to the story that's been building up until that moment these i think these scenes watching these scenes changed the way i thought about these characters because i was reminded in a very poignant way that they do have backstories that we're not necessarily told because we don't really need to know the back stories did it change the way you think about um these characters and especially jesus himself um you know i think i think it just made them um relatable and and and just and i know it's it's it's also been i just want to make one kind of clarification that um it's it's been assumed as much and because of her situation as lilith uh it's appeared that that we're portraying uh mary as a prostitute but we're actually not but you're not the first person to to kind of see that uh i think what happens is that under in whatever her seven demons of that were possessing her you know uh the the the assumption is that there was some bad choices made um so i just wanted to clarify that because i know dallas has been protective of that idea that not trying to portray her as a prostitute but like you know um for whatever her the backstory that we've invented as her deep deep wounds that led to possession um you know it could have spawned her the situation that where nicodemus finds her um could have been spawned by an element that is relating to that but she wasn't technically um that so uh so even even in that clarification and in how that portrayal is like i i'd never thought about like what were the the demons of possession that that mary magdalene had like like you know because there's all kinds of things humans we suffer from all kinds of you know attacks from from everywhere like um could it have been you know some sort of sexual oppression kind of thing and manifesting itself and like how would that have played out like how do could she have would she have blacked out would she have literally become another person in in those you know in in those kinds of scenarios and how frightening must that have been for her you know um i had never thought about her you know her life up until uh prior to the point of of jesus healing her ever really you know because we've never seen it we only have ever met her on film and in these stories at that point where she's following jesus and everything is cool and she's on the team you know what i mean but how did she get to the team how did the coach pick her you know like why why did he pick her you know so um yeah it's changed how i view many of these characters um you know peter is a character that i i've seen a little bit of the backstory for um in like for instance jesus nazareth kind of you get a little bit of his fisherman's life in that depiction um but not much not nothing like what we're doing what we're doing um what what the chosen is doing and dallas and his team are writing has never been done before which is what's so exciting and refreshing about it and just the i i think the reason why people have responded to it because it's it's new but it's it's still uh it's relatable and it's not deviating from the stories we know it's just adding backstory to the gospel stories we know and love jonathan how do you feel about the the inevitable fact that people are going to um you know kind of envision your face when they're praying or when they're doing their devotions or something that's that's something that jim kavisa with the passion of the christ had to deal with and everyone who's ever portrayed jesus i think in a beloved um film adaptation or television adaptation uh how do you work through that uh you know there's uh there's not much i can do to kind of get my face out of people's minds at some point it's funny uh last year toward the end of the year i think after all of season one was released around thanksgiving my my sister called me she's like okay listen this has got to stop i was praying the other night and then your face popped into my head and like that's not really what i was planning when you told me you were going to be playing jesus and i said listen for it wasn't my i just okay don't look at a painting just use a painting do what i do so i'll go to different for me uh i obviously i don't think of myself um i but i've had that as well and uh you know i i try to refer to um paintings that aren't of specific people that i know to kind of put a face on on christ myself because um it makes it more uh it's more tangible if i don't to me as like that could be a depiction of christ because uh i don't know that that's you know robert powell or that's jim caviezel um and uh so it's it's it's kind of interesting like seeing people's there's been a lot of fan art um the fans have been amazing um for this show they've been so loving and supportive and um so many of them have joined me in prayer and um so dedicated and some the fan art has been phenomenal um and you know i i just say you know i'm is what i signed up for so i'm prepared to whatever however god wants to uh lead me and and use me to bring people closer to his son if it happens to be that my image connects them or this this depiction um in this show connects them which is a lot of the feedback we've been getting like people's relationships to christ have been either established or restored or refreshed or revitalized in some way that to me has become my mission part of my mission on this earth why i'm doing this why i'm here doing this role and not somebody else for this particular project and this time and place um it to me it's become clear that it's it's been part of my mission as an artist and i have to say if uh you happen to replace any uh pictures of obi-wan kenobi on a little grandma's mantle piece it it'll be okay you know that's a that's an improvement yeah i think i i uh it was a couple days after may 4th but i uh you know i for the heck of it i there was one or two images from um you haven't gotten there yet i think uh in episode seven where i literally look like a jedi oh nice though so i i posted a picture on my instagram page that basically says you know jesus the original jedi master you know um and uh so yeah i'm i'm happy if it's uh not obi-wan on little granny's mental places uh you know uh in a sense you know i think the average christian to get serious here for a second um what you were talking about earlier really struck me especially evangelicals i think we're more prone to over deify jesus if i can put it that way than we are to over humanize him we sort of imagine him um almost detached almost like a gnostic jesus not intentionally but an unintentionally gnostic jesus where he's just floating through his world and and not really paying full attention to the cloud yeah because he's so caught up in uh in the world of being god why do you think it's so important that we remember and portray jesus like he's portrayed in the chosen that jesus is really god become actually man in the incarnation um because he was human you know because that's how that's how we relate to him that's how we know that he understands our sufferings and our trials and all our struggles and that why when we are having a difficult time in life that we need to turn to him and not turn away from him i think that's why that's so important to remember because if we didn't have an example of a god that knows what it's like to be human well then you know when things get tough for us it's like what's our response well you don't know what it's like to be human god and he's like yeah you're right you know but in this case we don't have that excuse he's like uh no no i do actually i i i've been there and this is when and this is how and this is what i did for you guys so now you must do this for each other so if i was willing to go to the cross for you and be scourged and and you know uh beaten and crucified you know you can forgive that 50 bucks your neighbor owes you just let it go you know that thing that somebody said that they said in the heat of an argument you know you can let it go and just be like forget it you know we have to we have to um really we have to we have an opportunity to to truly walk the walk and be the best versions of ourselves possible because of the example that christ gave us and so um for me it's you know it's a daily struggle it's a daily struggle to kind of just walk to walk upright you know and and and live by his example but when it's tough i i know that you know he made the ultimate sacrifice for us so all i got to do is just turn over my troubles to him and surrender and he makes it all easier what are you most excited about as the series continues getting back to work um i i think yeah i mean specifically narratively um i i'm looking i don't know if it's how or when or if um but i'm really looking forward to um this story with lazarus lazarus john i think john 11 20 20 something like pretty much john chapter 11 is about lazarus and uh and just exploring um hoping to get to explore the friendship where you know it's one of the only times you know and jesus wept we're like wow when it when you have a line like and jesus wept lazarus must have meant something to this to him this guy must have meant something so there's so many um relationships that we're building with the disciples um and there's such talented actors to work with so uh as as as the the troop fills out uh it's it's gonna be really interesting to kind of see where the stories go um and yeah that's uh i think just just hopefully being able to tell these stories for a long time for the next several years to come that that is our that is all of our our hopes amen well my guest today has been jonathan rooney who plays jesus in the chosen it's a mini series uh that has aired on vid angel and season one is currently available for free in its entirety on the vid angel app and we'll link you to that at breakpoint.org and tell you how to watch jonathan thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast it's been just a great conversation thank you shane i appreciate it

Channel: Colson Center

Views: 143,316

Keywords: Christianity, Colson Center, Christian Worldview, Breakpoint Podcast, Jonathan Roumie, Shane Morris, The Chosen, Vidangel, vidangel the chosen, BreakPoint

Id: rVFLGIOQ61w

Length: 35min 39sec (2139 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020