Portraying Jesus’ disciples 2000 years after they lived

what's your approach to playing a person who was actually lived talk about your research talk about if you have a more of a connection to that person than you would have otherwise and how you kind of approach the the delicacy of handling someone who lived in real life [Music] well i'm with john i remember we've talked about that a lot with john and you can you can pick up things from reading bits and pieces of scripture uh but there's also a lot of content that you can find online you can do research of you like by yourself but um what's important i think for any actor is to to find representations of yourself and the character and then that's that's always going to be the most truthful way it's not the only way you can mold yourself to become different versions of yourself but i was fortunate enough that with john we talked about the fact that he was quite um it was more practical his approach but there was also an intellectual scripture-based analytical side to him as well and i like the fact that with john you know you read up on these things in the research that he's initially a son of thunder he's a james and john are a little bit sort of quick to rush and quick to act but if jon then turns into this person who's sort of who almost leads by example and i use that example again the scene between um simon and john where simon's kind of losing his head a little bit and john's like take it easy you know jesus knows you just trust in it and surrender to that simon you don't have to be his bodyguard i think he can handle anything yeah well he called me and if we're not fighting the romans yet i want to do something until that time comes i need you to catch men having those two aspects uh i found parts of myself that i could insert into that character and that was really fun to do and that also gives you a clear arc so for me uh to find to know where john ends up and to know where he starts and then use parts of my character i can be a little bit as george can be a little bit jump onto something but i'm also very analytical but at the end of the day when you go on set you've got to use what's around you and i'm fortunate enough that what is around me is quite organic and natural as well so they're the two approaches any actor should take analytical and in the moment i mean for me it's always been everything i've needed to know about that character has always been in the dialogue sometimes you get a script that's great like this show and sometimes you get a script that's difficult to work with so for me it's always been the fun of let me read this and somehow organically the character part of myself comes out and merges with that and this moment i got zebedee i was like well i did look him up and he's like mentioned once in the bible like great he sends his sons off and like but but the script was written so well that it was just okay this is who he is and i'm gonna play it and just see where it goes so it's always been my approach it was never let me do this method or that method or this it was more like let me just live this person's life and just see what happens as i'm reading it and i think i think a good script should have everything you need in it you know what that is too like there's not much like in you know scripture or like about them so it's like you look for clues like in the script like okay who's this guy but then i also relate to to you george to where it's like i like to start out by finding out okay what are similarities between me and this guy you know like what can i relate to um and i found like while looking for clues like he's a very you know kind-hearted very vulnerable type of guy so i wanted to bring that to him as much as possible but it's also cool being like not many people know about thaddeus so it's like i get to give this guy a voice for people to relate to and i get to give this this this person who lived um like a chance to to relate and like communicate with people like through this vessel that we're doing which i think is incredible that we all get to do there's a little bit more freedom now we can kind of go okay we can we can then kind of develop a backstory about thaddeus and there's that great scene in in episode five where we talk about you being uh a stone so amazing yeah who um met jesus on a construction job building a latrine you know what were you building in the cedar uh uh a public amenity an aqueduct no of a something uh humbler what the man it's it's not proper to say in front of a woman i have seen and heard things that would turn your blood to ice and the dream wait nice and that's the kind of thing that like we were able to just invent and it actually ends up making the characters and the script and the episode that much more rich when you can add these little details some of which we can't do with some of the other characters um but yeah we've talked a little bit about your approach to andrew there is more in scripture about andrew than others we found him to be responsible he was clearly very responsible we've kind of we're kind of portraying a little bit as jesus's personal assistant at times but every time jesus says to people uh simon and andrew like in episode four um go do this simon stops and waits and is arguing and you're instantly just going to do it and also in episode 8 when jesus heals simon's mother-in-law and you and simon walk in he says go to go to the back room and you instantly go to the background but talk about that just again the approach andrew your research what was important to me is seeing the helplessness in the first few episodes this like i can't anything i'm trying to do we're failing we don't have enough money i can't pay the taxes we're not catching fish like it's not working and so then when all of a sudden meeting you know the messiah and going this is it this is the way going all in in that kind of respect we're saved we're saved i saw him with my own eyes oh it wasn't great andrew what did you see the lamb of god when he says throw down your nets there's like no question in my mind like what else have i everything i've been doing up to this point isn't working throw down your nets it's like of course there's no kind of ego involved as in like it's that's not quite you know i've been trying this it's not working for andrew it's like i'm done i'm out of ego there's nothing left and so the whole writing team has created a landscape for us to live in and so really it's like just as much as you can immerse yourself in it i feel like from my point of view that's that's where all the sort of most of the answers are you know yeah paris there's matthew wrote a whole book yeah you've got you've got a lot of a lot paris may or may not have read all of it my approach is similar to george's in that i like to bring a little bit of myself and what i'm portraying and you find similarities and um i i read a lot of articles online and then you sent me some stuff and then we we met and everything i i just remember when i got the part i i wanted portraying the spectrum was more of a of a thing i wanted to be authentic about so i remember immersing myself in that and watching documentaries and you know even just just trying to get as much as i can to just kind of portray that and i like the process of discovery along the way too and just learning things while it's happening because i think that response and that what happens in your heart or your gut or whatever is an organic feeling that doesn't happen i like to be left um unpredictable like kind of like i like finding it out before not knowing that that whole dynamic is what i think that helps because when you leave yourself open just a little bit to where you don't know the character 100 just like we don't know ourselves 100 percent we do and say things in life i do it all the time where you surprise yourself and i can't believe i just said that or i can't believe i just did that and your character shouldn't be any different so there should be i feel an element where you don't know your character completely enough space to allow something to happen when you're filming and also yeah and we there's a similarity here everyone's sort of saying oh there's bits of me in this character as well so that's that's casting has done that there's something that we brought to the room that was like the character anyway well i think that's what you know hopefully is helping make the show work which is we're treating these people as actual human beings as opposed to i think what a lot of times i've seen growing up as a as a believer and as someone who's seen all these jesus in bible movies the characters are often treated like almost like statues that are being honored yeah it's like this archetype that cannot shift and over the course of us of a multi-season show which hasn't been done before it allows us the ability to find human nuances that that that make it more uh connective and more relatable and i think that's what the audience is responding to this is probably true of all of you when you auditioned i think i even said make sure that you don't treat this like it's a it's a bi a formal bible film right right like these are people and we're gonna portray them as real people exactly and that's that's why i had to find also being like on set actually and then in the actual environment actually helped a lot actually working with the with the actors themselves like the entire environment gave answers to the questions that we had and sometimes you have a certain perception of a certain idea of how you want to deliver something how you want to portray a character and then being in that actual environment and then start working with it but with your colleagues it just automatically answers questions you had you immediately just jump into it and can do it right away without needing to like discuss it further or like do more research about it because there's only a certain amount of research you can actually do and anything after that is just see what's going to happen and especially since we don't i didn't want to have my character because i saw the first episodes before i came to try to see the tone of the show and get the atmosphere and i saw none of them were like statue like

Channel: The Chosen

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Keywords: the chosen, the chosen tv series, bingeJesus, GetUsedtoDifferent, Faith-based, Bible show, Bible study, Christianity, church, Jesus show, what to watch, tv show, filmmaking

Id: jW2VaNIkzpo

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020