The Chosen Livestream: Season 3 Updates

[Music] throw me like this down in the water watch the mud rise up dress me like a lamp for the slaughter for me in your cup [Music] [Music] i was not [Music] you might think your hands are clean till the wind [Music] [Music] [Music] use me till i'm scraping the bottom make my will run dry shake them coins i know where you got them kiss me kiss [Applause] [Music] i [Music] you might think your hands are clean [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] good i was one way you found me [Music] [Applause] um [Applause] [Applause] [Music] travels [Applause] [Music] hey there we're on we're on ron we're live i'm in a room with several other people guests who will be coming soon and right now while you are watching if you wouldn't mind saying something even if it's just where you're from or the number one whatever it is get that chat going because once people start commenting and once you start sharing and liking and subscribing and by the way uh today uh tonight's live stream is uh you can only ask questions or comment if you are a subscriber so make sure this is on youtube at least so if you are on youtube make sure that you have subscribed if you want to ask a question even if you're not a big fan of the show and you want to ask some sort of like negative question or challenging question i'm sure we're going to get some of those tonight we'll try to answer them but even if you must you know if you're really eager to do that you're going to have to do that awful thing and hit that subscribe button and then if you want after this live stream is over you can hit unsubscribe to you know if you want to protest in some way but tonight you have to be subscribed to make a comment so that we can manage somewhat the number of comments i'm going to get to as many as i can as many questions as i can answer got a lot to cover tonight tonight's a bit of what i would call a family chat okay so if you are new to the chosen welcome we love that you're here uh but i would say the majority of tonight's live stream is going to be stuff that is about where we're at as an organization where we're at as a family some things that we're going through that are challenging right now some fun things a couple of things that i'm going to share with you in terms of what we need right now so this is what i would call a bit of a family chat so we've got a lot to cover here's here's some of what we're going to be covering tonight um is we've got two significant things um that i want to talk to you about one of them is slightly a problem that i hope you can help with and then the other one is fun announcement that's going to shift like cause a new shift in the direction of the show uh and in the direction of our efforts to get this show to a billion people it's a pretty significant milestone that i'm excited to share with you we got an update on some of our recent efforts including my visit to liberty which is root which is really cool and i'm going to show you just a little bit of that in just a minute i've got a really cool video that we'll be showing near the end of the live stream that kind of recaps season 2 and 2021 i think you'll really love that especially if you were part of season two if you were if you're a big chosen fan and you want to see just what it looks like it's gonna what that year look like uh it's really really cool i've got some guests i've got jordan walker ross who plays little james jordan just like walk over here real quick just to wave just to give a little taste of yeah that's a taste he said hello but there's gonna be more when he's when he comes um we're gonna bring on sean sharma who is currently waiting patiently he's not here in the room uh because he doesn't live in texas but i'm gonna bring him on and then we've also got a production designer and my college roommate jim cunningham you know him as james richard cunningham which is the most formally british like like old school name ever he's our production designer we're gonna give you an update on what's going on with our production design and our whole schedule um but we got a lot to cover tonight it's gonna be really fun first things first we do want to address briefly what's going on in the world which is of course what's happening in ukraine is at the forefront of so many people's minds um and i wanted to read you a note that we got you know we posted on friday uh just a picture of the fact that in our uh in the app when you go to season one or season two and you click on audio and subtitles when you open up a an episode and you'll see in subtitles ukrainian is one of the as one of the languages did you know that we have tens of thousands of people in ukraine who have downloaded the chosen app and uh who have watched the chosen in some fashion and so we consider them of course part of our family and uh we got this note after we posted that someone said love your post uh this is from laura love your post about ukrainian chosen last summer we had a ukrainian orphan 12 years old stay with us and we showed her the room the chosen in russian which was really well done the the the subtitling and the uh the uh dubbing we couldn't share the gospel with her due to the language barrier but she watched the chosen and she loved it to pieces begged for it every evening 12 years old and said it helped her sleep that's sometimes that's a good that's a good thing sometimes a bad thing but in this case it helped her sleep and she was drawing pictures of jesus all over our whiteboard i pray she's remembering this series now thank you thank you for all you've done from laura i thought you would appreciate hearing that you have everything to do with that the only reason we're able to get into these other countries is because you pay it forward and allow them an opportunity to watch it the reason we're able to translate it is because we have these amazing volunteer translators who stay up long hours to get this translated into another languages and and right now more than ever we just our hearts and prayers of course are with the people of ukraine as they're going through a lot and uh so there's always that connection that we have to people around the world through the chosen app which is in every single country in the world before i get into this thing i want to talk to you about uh that's more significant i do want to do i want to share with you just a couple of housekeeping items on the app so the chosen app is the hub okay this is where millions and millions of people have downloaded the app this is the best place to watch it it's got the best quality it's where most of the people pay it forward it's where most people purchase gifts it's where you're going to get your thank you notes for example when you do pay it forward so one of the things that i wanted to share that's really important is what i'd like you to do right now if you can or you can do it some other time if you're watching on the app then don't do it right now just write this down but i want you to change your notification settings to make sure that you are getting notified when we have updates for you from the app i know that a lot of times you're going to click the button to not receive updates from most websites but for the chosen app i i think it's going to be it's going to benefit you um we don't spam you but uh colin if you could play that animation this is how you do it it's very simple it doesn't it takes less than a minute and it just ensures that once a week or so you'll hear from us when we remind you of something and we want to let you know of a new development this is one of our best ways to communicate with you okay so you're gonna go to the chosen app you're gonna click on that icon in the lower right that has like the little little head and shoulders thing and uh and then you're gonna rejoice at the end after you've changed to uh to to turn your notifications on so just click on that that little head and shoulder thing in the lower right now this is also how if you have never done this if you never paid it forward if you've never purchased a gift or anything like that and you're just you just have the app well you can set up an account and when you set up an account we don't spam you i promise but this is how you get emails from us so we send out like an email a week or so maybe an email every two weeks when we're about to do a live stream we give you updates and we also let you know when we have a new gift item we have we let you know when we have a prayer request we try to protect this a lot in fact i have people on the team sometimes and and outside experts who say well you need to email a lot three or four times a week is what's best we say no we don't want to be bothering people too much we want it when we want it so that when you do get an email it actually means something so so if you are not getting emails from us uh you are missing out on a lot of important updates that we'd like to give so that would be really helpful not only for you but for us to be able to reach more people when we have something important to share like we do tonight so just set up an account uh i promise you you don't have to if you don't want to it's not you know you can still watch the show free if you don't set up an account but setting up an account allows us to get in touch with you more easily and allows you to get allows you to get in touch with us and us to get in touch with you i remember what i said but either way um so that would be really helpful if you would do that and also make sure you update your app okay so that means just sometimes going to the app store wherever you got the app and if you are not updated you will click the update button in the app store and it will just make sure that your app is fresh and has all the nice new features that we are bringing out regularly or just sometimes it's just improving it just making sure that it has fewer uh issues with it fewer glitches all right so here's the first thing that i want to talk to you about tonight um [Music] i won't mince words but we are uh struggling a little bit i'm struggling a little bit to be honest with you um we're trying to get season three going uh and i i announced last month that we are aiming for i said we're aiming for april 20 april 18th or 25th uh that is still the case uh we are still intending to begin filming the week of april 25th it might delay one week hoping not to it might delay one week but we are going to really hold the line on starting filming april 25th um but here's why that's a problem so when we made the decision we're gonna stick to this because we need to get season three out there as soon as possible there are so many reasons why season three needs to come out as soon as possible i'm not even going to get into all of them but the thing is not everything is ready for season three i mean as you know and i'm going to give you an update in just a minute or two not no it's going to be a few minutes more than longer than that i'm going to give you an update we're going to talk to jim cunningham our production designer about the status of the sets that are being built and the sound stage that's being built um but i mean just a couple days ago for example we had an ice storm in texas now by storm i mean like there was a handful of ice particles on the roads i'm from chicago it was nothing but for texas it's a it's a it's a you know it's a red alert so but that shut down you know construction just for a day every day counts and uh covet was a big issue um you know we lost people to covet for a week at a time or so uh the supply chain has been an issue so things have been slowing us down and um but yet we said no we we need to start as close to on time as possible so what that means is that the season then gets stretched out so sometimes it means we have to take a hiatus in the middle of the season to give us time to keep to build some of the things that need to get ready uh some of our cast and crew can't necessarily work for 17 straight weeks you know so uh we so the hiatus is an important thing but hiatuses cost money um every day we take off costs a lot of money i mean every day of filming every day that once the once the train leaves the station every day costs you know minimum six figures and so anytime we take a day off anytime we stretch things out at all that costs more money than we anticipated and our our desire to get you the season earlier is sometimes at conflict with our ability to afford some of the things that that means and so here's another thing that is causing us to be a little bit behind financially my writers and i wrote too much so remember when you were watching season two and almost well not just almost every single episode would end and people go no why isn't it longer now part of that's a little bit deceptive because some of the episodes were longer they just felt shorter because i think you like them so much at least i think but sometimes um you know some episodes are a little shorter than others well this season three we wrote my my producer and our assistant director was like all right we have 15 extra days of filming this year then last year and i'm like wait wait wait that's really expensive they're like yeah it's expensive like why is it 15 days what are you doing they're like well because you wrote 40 more pages than last year uh and you know even at like six seven pages a day of filming that adds up so i went to my co-writers and were like we might have to cut some scenes we might have to cut some entire sections of the script here to make this work and we're like we don't really don't want to do that we're reading through the script and everything that we are thinking we should cut just shouldn't be cut because it's i think it's really good people who've read it think it's really good and uh so we're like well we don't really want to cut anything like it's okay if there's 40 extra pages this season they're like all right well fine well that's expensive and what we find ourselves the position we find ourselves in often with this show is in a much different position than you know a show like game of thrones or a show like this is us or a show like you know think of a show that is popular on netflix or on hbo max or an nbc or something like that and they have tens of millions hundreds of millions of dollars that when something like this comes up when they're delayed a week or two or when there's 40 extra pages that's a rounding error in their in in their accounting and for us it means entire days of filming that we might not be able to afford and so it puts us in this position of going well we've made the show free people have the choice to pay it forward so if we need if if we need more money to afford the cost for an increased season and that also includes cast and crew and we want them to be taken care of as much as possible but we get to a point where you go all right we've done everything we can we've taken care of our cast and crew as much as possible we're trying to get it to the place where they don't have to take a bunch of other jobs to to to make ends meet that we can kind of take care of them year round if possible and we're trying to do that where we can and sometimes you reach that ceiling that other shows don't reach where we're like we've got as much as we can get right now considering the people who pay it forward here's the important thing did you know that and this is an estimate but less than five percent of the people who've seen the chosen have actually paid for it now in many ways that's a good thing that means that so many people millions and millions of people all over the world are watching this show for free because so many can't afford to pay for it and that is awesome news and we're doing everything we can to keep that train moving and to make sure that everyone is served and that we get languages paid for and translations done and we have volunteers who do it without getting paid because they're so desperate to get this to more people we want to get to as many people as possible but the reality is we're probably the only show in the history of the universe in which over 90 percent of the people who watch it don't pay anything for it so what do we do with that what do we do with that when we've got just a limited number of people who actually do choose to pay we're not a non-profit we're not a ministry we we're a for-profit company that just offers optional payment you can pay for it if you want to but what happens when people are paying it forward and they're doing a great job and we're doing well and the chosen is doing well we are healthy we're not we're like by no means is this like a plea or is this like a woe is me kind of thing this is just the simple reality of the fact that like we're in season three this is a big show this is a first century show sets cost money wardrobe costs money um cast and crew costs money days cost money and we've reached that point for season three where it's like we're at our edge we have no more and if we want to pull this off then we're going to have to have more somehow so what do we do in those cases do we just say all right we need to stop our efforts internationally we need to pull back as much as we can to just be able to afford the things that we are doing we could do that but i'm not so sure that's the best for what the world is wanting every single day countries around the world are saying we got the show we got the chosen and and we just broadcast it here and now we want more can you help us can you give us social media help can you get it translated and we're like we can't we don't have the resources to do that we're putting all of our resources as much as we can into production and into our company we have a growing company so for example i don't know if you knew this at all but the chosen llc the chosen company is separate from the overall product so when you see like the app that's done by angel studios they're our distribution partner okay so they do a great job and they're distributing the show in the app and they're building the app but then we've got our own company we're responsible for quite a bit you know to make the show to to for our social media for what i'm doing to you right now for the crew that's in this room right now our special projects all those things that we're doing to spread the show around the world our translation teams our you know our marketing teams all of that and then now we're trying to expand internationally you know you're some of you may know julie molina who's one of our shining stars in our organization and has been an executive assistant project manager for the last uh you know year or two and we're shifting her responsibilities towards brazil because we want to plant a flag in brazil because brazil is demanding more and more asking more and more we want to chosen more and we want to set up and do in brazil the same thing that we're doing in the united states we need to resource that well that resourcing is not going to come from paying it forward that comes from gift sales so gift sales keep our company going and allow us to you know we now have 27 full-time employees actually it's probably closer to 30 now it's growing every month and we're not going to let pay it forward money uh go into that we want pay it forward money to go towards the things that i'll mention in just a second but uh the primary thing to pay it forward it covers is production so that's the actual filming and the actual post production and all of those things that that make the show so the making of the show is paid for by pay it forward money and then the rest is paid for by gift money well we'd love to take some of that gift money and maybe maybe we stop hiring people maybe we keep small we take some of that money and put it towards production you can't so that's where we're at right now and i just i wanted to share with you some of the reasons why we're in this situation and also share with you how pay it forward works um and i won't take too much of your time i know that some of this isn't you know entertaining but um tonight's not one of those i mean we're gonna have some entertaining things tonight i promise they're coming up soon but it's not all about entertainment i just want to share with you what we're dealing with here so like the month of february was down significantly in paid forwards uh down significantly in gift sales uh compared especially to january now some of that's to be expected after a big you know awesome christmas season um but compared to the number of people who are watching the show and the number of countries we're trying to reach and all that stuff pay it forward was down pretty pretty strongly compared to usual um so uh when people do pay it forward i'll give you this funnel this is what happens so let's just say x amount of money comes in for pay it forward right off the top 25 goes towards marketing that's automatic okay so that's an agreement that we have with angel studios who this is how they do with all their other projects which is you know you watch it for free if you choose to pay it forward 25 comes off the top right off the bat for marketing to keep it keep it spreading the word keep it keep us able to let people know and when you say well why aren't you up excuse me why don't i ever see you know tv ads why don't i see you guys on you know like why don't i see commercials i mean we were just at liberty university and some people were like i you know i just heard about the chosen a couple weeks ago why aren't i seeing it with other things well it's because we don't have a huge marketing budget it's 25 of whatever comes in from pay it forward then of course there's some that goes to costs and building the app and engineering and all of that and angel studios our distributor obviously has to get paid and and then the rest after all those logistics and legal stuff i mean there's lots of costs that go into it goes towards production and i've got some of these notes here because i wanted to make sure that i got this right but um but the kind of cost we have to cover when it comes to production equipment obviously very expensive cast and crew travel and lodging i mean those are the kinds of things you don't always think about like we have to fly in and then house for months at a time a lot of our crew union fees because now you know season three reunion with our crew and we've always knew they're cast and so you're paying those fees as well which we're happy to do trailers and vehicles to have people on you know when the actors you know need a place to go during on set construction costs writing the scripts uh producing all the production uh cost post-production which is happening while we're in while we're filming there's also an entire company in los angeles that's handling all the footage and they're an entire post-production team that is editing and and coloring and doing all the audio stuff that happens for months and months at a time um and then this year because we have some of the stuff that takes place in utah some of the stuff that takes place in texas some of it takes place in different parts of texas we have sometimes we have to rent a studio so we're all over the place every time we travel every time we move that's an significant cost we call it a company move and uh we have to take the entire production and go get into new uh hotels and new housing and lodging and uh and storage and all that so it is a big deal we are a huge show and yet we aren't financed as though we're a huge show so um and as i mentioned our company is growing and uh we're expanding our social media teams you know that we have multiple people assigned just to each platform so that you can get your questions answered we try to respond to every single comment that we can both in our inboxes and under each of the posts so we have a social media team for facebook and for instagram and for tick tock and for twitter and we're trying to keep growing that um and yet at the end of the day none of that happens when if the show doesn't work and if production isn't being taken care of and if the show isn't awesome if the show isn't uh being led by god to impact people's lives then the rest of it is just spinning our wheels and so we really need season three to be everything that it can be and everything that god wants it to be and um so anyway i just wanted to let you know that and uh if by some chance um you do have the means and the desire to pay it forward then you can do so at the app and one of the cool things about the app when you do that and i get these notifications every day is uh thank you notes so when someone watches an episode and it says this episode was paid forward by dallas in texas um you know you get on my app here you can't see it i guess but at the bottom there's the notifications and it comes up with uh i can click on thank yous and i get all these see if you can see this it's probably too that's out of focus but um people saying thank you from all over the country and from all over the world um giving these notes in fact someone just said thank you i am poor and it's nice to see a program that's not charging me i just found that right just now god god should never cost anyone anything well the show does cost though so people do have to uh so but she she can't or he can't i don't know who it is um and so the way to do that is to pay it forward through the app or through the website uh at the chosen dot tv again if you can't if you don't want to if you choose not to that is up to you by no means do we ever force it do i ever beg i'm not begging i'm just letting you know the situation and you can choose to do with that what you will um but recognize that we can't ever get to a place where people all over the world are just paying it forward like they do in the states because again in most countries the app itself maybe the episodes are translated but the app isn't translated so they don't have the means to pay it forward necessarily and some of them are don't have even if even if the app was translated uh they wouldn't have the means to do so so those of us who can pay it forward sometimes if we want the show to grow if we wanted to get to more people we have to step up our efforts so i'm just letting you know that all right so what i'd love to do is um i want to bring on sean sharma sean sharma plays shmuel say that 10 times fast sean plays shumuel and he is one of my favorites because he's playing a character who is antagonistic towards jesus and yet people love him for some reason sean i don't know what it is i think that they kind of love to hate i think there's a little bit of that but that means you're doing your job but uh but sean welcome to the chosen family and welcome to tonight's live stream i am so honored to be here with all of you great thank you um so uh julie and kristen if you could occasionally as i'm talking to sean if we got some questions for sean i know we've had people uh throughout this week when they've heard that sean's gonna be on i've been like oh shmuel i hate him and uh or um i love him uh so if you've got any questions for uh for sean you can bring them up but sean let's just talk real quick how you even got to the chosen i remember the day you came in um to audition and i believe was it was it shmuel that you auditioned for yeah initially i got the audition for simon peter and then i got the call back for shmuel and that's when i actually got a chance to meet you is when i went down to beverly's office and we had a chance to meet and i remember you commented on my all birds that i was wearing at the time and so i was like all right cool he knows the deal and so yeah it was it was well that i met you with yeah and i'm always curious what about like when you when you get cast as a character or even when you're just preparing an audition um obviously a character who's going to be somewhat antagonistic now again when the show started shmuel was just a super fan for nicodemus and over time he has become more antagonistic towards nicodemus and ultimately more antagonistic towards jesus but when you're studying your character when you're learning your lines i mean you in real life obviously don't have antagonism towards jesus of nazareth how do you put yourself into that place how do you put yourself into a into a character in which he might be saying things that you sean wouldn't necessarily say yourself yeah i think every actor who plays a villain knows you don't judge the character and you have to put yourself in that character's shoes and every person i mean most people who are seen as villains in their own minds think that they're doing the right thing um and so and oftentimes some people are doing the right thing but they just are on the wrong side of history and so it's very hard sometimes to look at a character like shmuel and want to judge him harshly because you know i've had so many people write to me or talk to me about how if i was alive 2000 years ago would i have immediately recognized jesus as the messiah or would i too have had questions and um i think that was such a beautiful thing that you and i talked about when we started working on this together was you giving me the latitude to make schmoe not like you even said it like a mustache twirling bad guy it's like you know there's so many people who are stuck in a rigid way of belief and and shmuel can remind us to kind of not be stuck in those rigid ways yeah um exactly and that's the thing about shmuel that i think is really important for people to understand is that shemuel at the time people sometimes will think of the pharisees in general as as evil and pharisee actually just refers to a religious belief it's not actually like it wasn't just this club of people like i'm now officially a pharisee therefore i'm now mean or now i'm judgmental in fact pharisees were beloved by the majority of the people and what happened was over time they started taking some of the laws that were there that god had actually given them and just taking them too far and then when jesus comes along and says i'm actually here representing god and in fact i am god i am the messiah well for someone like shmuel who's a passionate torah believer and when has a very strong belief about who the messiah is going to be and jesus isn't that it's not that you have a personal vendetta against jesus it's like you're upsetting my people like i'm i'm responsible for these people and you are messing with their minds some of these miracles are fun and dandy but like they could be dissuading people or distracting people from uh who what from the truth from the true from the true law now that leads me to this question from laura baird here that says sean what it's actually sean s-h-a-a-n just fyi i'm sure you've had it spelled sean thousands of times in your life thanks laura it was probably auto-corrected anyway it probably wasn't your fault right what research did you do for the role so that goes to have you done additional research into what the pharisees believed at the time beyond just the script that we give you oh of course i mean i think you know talking with my friends uh also who are uh very devout and and have gone to like you know like i have friends that went to northwestern who are also investors in the show and stuff and so you know like talking with my friends who also have gone to a lot of bible studies and talked about this and um watching the bible project those videos online have been amazing because they shed a lot of light on so many different aspects of it has been great just doing my own like online research has been wonderful and you know those the bible round tables or the chosen round tables that you've had with uh have been incredible i mean there was there was one round table where i forget who it was who said this it wasn't the jewish rabbi i think it was the pastor who said you know like the the pharisees were kind of like the religious experts at the time and people looked at them with respect like they understood the the torah better than anyone else and so when pharisees started to criticize jesus that it kind of threw the population for a loop like oh no what does this mean for me if the pharisees are also resisting this and so that really helped me get into the compassionate mindset as well about those that may not see what's in front of them yeah i just saw this um from story our story hour with miss barbara she actually uh super chatted fifty dollars thank you uh thank you story ms barbara uh that's unnecessary but very much appreciated uh she says sean what is shmuel teaching you about yourself are there things in the in the playing of this character that have started to impact you in some way you know that's such an interesting question miss barbara because uh you know one of the things that i've really um have what i've learned about myself from playing shmuel is that who we see as the bad guy isn't necessarily the bad guy you know one of the like they may end up wrong but it doesn't mean they're the bad guy like you know one of the things that i think we can all relate to is people around us who we think are misguided and we have and some of them are our friends and family and we can't you know we can't judge them too harshly because we still have to live with them we still where we can hopefully we choose to try to work things out with them instead of just abandoning them and in this case you know like somebody could be i could i could look at someone and say i really disagree with where they're coming from but i also have to have an open mind and be like you know in their mind they think they're doing the right thing so how can we come together how can we figure this out together and in many cases there's just no bridging that gap but i don't want it to be because of my lack of trying that there's that gap that exists yeah that's really really well said i think it's really important today more than ever i know this sounds like a cliche but how often are we especially on social media we hear someone or see someone say something that we disagree with and then that means okay not only do i disagree with them but they are now on the other team i hate the other team therefore now i must hate them and uh and and many times they're thinking the same thing about something you've said and can we find a way to see the person and not just the comment or or and i think that's one of the key things about shmuel so i want to close with this um season three you have not read the scripts yet um i know that because i've not sent them to you yet uh but they are coming soon to the actors i promise um but is there something i'd just be curious if there's something you're actually like in your mind with the with the the direction shmuel is going is there something in season three or in future seasons that you think like i hope it goes this direction or i think it's going here or this is how i feel shmuel is going like what's something that in season three when you read those scripts you're going i hope to see something like this well people ask me all the time you know what's going to be the trajectory of shmuel and i said only dallas knows so it's in his mind and in you know tyler and ryan's mind about where this is all going to go but you know the speculation is that schmuel isn't going to end up on the right side of any of this stuff in the long term but you know so one of the things i fantasized about and i think we even talked about this briefly when we were on set in in texas together was i i have this fantasy of just shmuel confronting jesus and just being despondent like please stop coming at you know us because you know we're just doing our best and you're you're distracting people from the actual word of the torah and you're you're blaspheming and you're spreading all this false prophecy and for like shmuel to just like really get you have an explosive interaction where he's trying to stand up for what he thinks is the way it should be and he just doesn't realize he's on the wrong side of that argument and that he's not he doesn't have his open eyes to see and so that's you know it'd be fun if i got to yell at jesus that would be fun well uh i can i can tell you i've already yelled at jesus in the first season but that's what i was going to say you have yelled at jesus um i'll give this little minor spoiler as you do have an opportunity in season three to um to talk to jesus and it's not yelling um so i'll just say that it's it's it's different than what viewers might expect from shmuel so i i'm not going to say where shamu ends up but the journey to get there i i can promise you is going to be very interesting very nuanced and is going to take full advantage of the skill that sean brings to the role because it would be a shame to to waste what you've brought by just giving you cliches um and what you and waseem who plays yanni oh i love stream yeah the two of you the two of you have brought so many great things to it so and you're giving me great news to know that i get to act with my brother jonathan because what we couldn't ask for a better person to be in that role so i'm excited um so uh as you sign off here anything uh you just want to share with the with the the viewers um because i know that uh just over the last couple years you've probably gotten plenty on social media and comments and questions just anything you'd like to say to them oh yeah i think the main thing is that as actors we want to tell stories that touch people's lives and i can't think of another story that touches more lives and is is as powerful as the story that i've been blessed to tell with you dallas and all the incredible cast and crew that we have so i just want to say to everybody who's watching that this is the opportunity and experience of a lifetime and the work that we do now and the stories we tell now will last for generations i think people watch the chosen 50 years from now 100 years from now um so i'm just so grateful i'm so excited i can't wait to get back to work with all of my friends and uh it's just this is an actor's dream to tell a story that touches so many lives awesome that's awesome thank you one quick thing uh because a question came up while you were chatting by the way we've gotten lots of comments of people just saying how how incredible of work you do and how how much they love your performance but a quick question came from dawn where she just said is there um a character in the show that you would would love to have a scene with that you haven't yet and then we'll uh you know there are so many incredible talents on our on our show i i geeked out when i met brandon who plays uh quintus like i had to go up and shake his hand because i just love his work i constantly tell liz how much i love her as mary and you know and and so but like we've got so many incredible actors i think it would be really fun in a scene for some random reason for me and quintus to have an interaction but that probably makes no sense but i just brandon is somebody who i just watch and i can't wait to see what he does next so i think you'd probably be quit this cool well thank you sean uh can't wait to see you soon brother i love working with you and thank you everybody a lot to come for future seasons with you brother awesome thanks everybody have fun tonight yep okay so uh here's another um quote unquote announcement here this is kind of the second thing that i wanted to share with you tonight and after we share this we'll take some more q a and then we'll be bringing on jordan walker ross but uh this is um there is a new app okay so think about what this means for a second right now if you have a roku you can find the chosen app on roku yes so we are now in the stage where roku apple tv fire stick are close to getting the chosen app native to those platforms so what that means is right now you have to pull it up on your phone and you pull up your phone and you click on uh the cast to the tv button and it pulls up your roku and you can connect to your roku well as of this moment you can right now on your roku search for angel studios and you will find the chosen app eventually when you you'll just need to search for the chosen and you'll be able to find it but did you know that last year this is really cool last year at the end of the year roku had their kind of end of year show where they're like talking through the most successful shows and all the great platforms that they have and they said these were the top five things searched on roku in 2021 number one was yellowstone number two was spongebob squarepants number three was harry potter number four was halloween and number five was the chosen the chosen was the fifth most searched project in the entire roku platform last year and what do they get when they search for it well there's it's season one is on a couple of platforms already but they wouldn't have found it on a chosen app or on an angel app now you can so we're going to show you a video of a special friend of mine who just the other day recorded himself getting onto the roku app to talk through how difficult it really is to find it on roku let's play that video now all right don't mind me i'm just trying to get the chosen on my roku tv i wonder how difficult it's going to be oh wait it's super easy i literally just did it in two seconds okay so go to the search tab on roku you will be typing angel studios boom right there with our friend eric press that sweet sweet ad channel oh who's that i didn't even do that that's just what came up yeah really is that easy so uh the next step is just find yourself a comfy couch get ready to binge that was both awesome and a little disturbing um so that was noah james who plays andrew of course and uh it is that easy so here's why this is important um two reasons number one this is a significant step forward in the show there are people who whether because they couldn't because they're just not tech savvy or because they just didn't want to because it was clunky or whatever i mean i think angel has done an extraordinary job of making it as easy as possible to cast your tv but um but i'm you know and i was able to do it and i'm tech tech struggling but not not a lot of people want to be on their phone while they're watching tv meaning that the the phone app has to remain on so you can find the roku the the the angel app on roku through your phone still so if you click on that button it will take you to that app and you can to the to the angel app on roku and then you won't need to use your phone again or you can just do it natively through roku but this is significant because now it's going to be found by millions of more people who might not have downloaded the app to their phone it's going to be much easier for people who are a little less tech savvy so this is a significant step forward and it's going to be happening on other platforms very soon as well i want to just like respond to some of the more commonly asked questions about this obviously how can i get the roku app um so again you can search for it in roku or connect through your phone if you want to do that now we are also working on getting listed in their search so that the chosen seasons one and two are available through our app since we only just released the roku channel it takes some time for all of our content to appear in their search the app will soon be available by just searching for the chosen it may take a week or two so things are developing over time okay thank you uh so lynette linda and annette just paid it forward a thousand dollars a piece so that's really awesome so she just got that note um so thank you for that linda and annette we really appreciate that um if you could just shift it this way so i can see better thank you um so uh anyway yeah julie my uh just wrote on on my whiteboard that linda and annette did this so thank you so much for that appreciate that um so be patient these things take time but here's why i'm telling you we haven't publicly announced this yet other than just what what i just did but we're not making a huge push for this yet because the app is still going to have some kinks to work out we want you to work out those kinks meaning we want you to to to experience it so you you know use the app and if there's an issue then you can contact uh support through the chosen app so you just pull the chosen app on your phone there's a help button you can say look this is what's happening or this was a glitch or whatever don't yet contact them to say uh well there's not season two you know i don't want we know that so there's things that will take time to develop but this is so cool that the chosen now exists on roku natively and will soon within next couple weeks hopefully exist natively on apple tv and firestick you will no longer have to use your phone to connect that is awesome and that is a significant step forward for the show that means many many more people finding it many many more people using it who've found it but don't want to use it through their phone this is big now once again though i do have to bring you back to what i talked about earlier when it is on the native roku or apple tv or firestick platforms that means especially initially there's no pay it forward option there now that will change over time but even once it changes it will be a little less easy to do it there than on your phone on your phone it's you know you you've already you're already connected to your apple pay or google pay or whatever it is but on the app how often have you watched something on roku or apple tv or whatever and purchase something or paid it forward with your tv remote it's it's more rare so this will likely mean a lot more viewers but a lower percentage of viewers who are paying it forward so again with all this great news comes like the sobering news of oh okay well more viewers but we gotta pay for this and this is taking some people away from their phones and towards the native app in on the platform and uh they might not be getting notifications from us they might not be getting emails from us it might be less inclined to pay it forward in this model than the other model so that's another reason why it is vital if you can if you feel led to if you want us to continue to grow and to expand our efforts uh to to pay it forward when you can all right um i want to bring out jordan hi jordan hello so good do i need a booster seat no but i i i surprised colin i think by bringing jordan out just now so this is me and jordan is this or colin is this some mike he's going to use is it working sound okay good yes so hi jordan hello you've been listening to all of this stuff yes are you excited about season three yes very much so why um because you're an actor in the show let's answer them yeah well i mean it's uh it's almost like going back to school like after summer break you know getting to see all of your friends again so uh getting to just be with our chosen family um because it really is like a family uh is the thing that uh you know right off the bat i'm excited about we talked almost every day in the group chat about how excited we are to be together again so um that obviously and then just to see what's next for not just little james but the rest of of all of the characters yes and i know that in the group chat sometimes which is lovely but every now and then i'll i'll say something and then we'll start getting texts or emails from people who in the from the group chat were like i heard we're delaying again i'm like i didn't say that so you got to help me out sometimes in those group chats like you know moderating a little bit because i know people can get scared sometimes so sometimes we've got to make sure that the group chat is like a calming positive place yeah yeah i know i'm being lighthearted but uh but yeah i know that you you guys um what what people sometimes don't understand when they say things like i'm so eager for season three you guys are like uh no one's more eager for season three than us because this is our livelihoods yeah yeah and uh so every delay that happens or everything every time that we are pinched in any way uh there's a real there's not only a financial cost to it but um like for you guys in many ways you plan ahead you know knowing okay we're we're hoping to shoot in april we don't know for certain but we we have to start planning our lives yeah we can't accept certain jobs that might be conflicting with that and stuff like that yeah um so what i wanted to know is uh little james in season two episode three we talked about um there's that scene in episode three where he's talking to thomas and he is expressing his thomas calls it a malady um to share with what you're exactly your malady is back then they wouldn't have had this kind of um this this kind of diagnosis right uh i have cerebral palsy and scoliosis um i was born two months early uh so it caused some medical issues um and i've had eight major surgeries um i think i'm pretty much done with the surgeries hopefully but uh yeah so that's my my specific malady eight major surgeries that don't of course remove cerebral palsy or no just [Music] and uh talk about your podcast real quick because it's i know it's called what's your limp yeah and it comes from what i know of you which is the fact that you are not someone who said well this is my lot in life i guess i'm just going to be in a wheelchair and work from home yeah yeah so it's called what's your lamp um and essentially i interview other people some have disabilities as well um but most of them are public figures whether they're actors athletes whatever and i talk to them about their limps uh because i believe we all have a limp whether it's physical or internal one of mine just happens to be physical um and you actually helped me a lot in this show by embracing that about me because before it was the thing i was most insecure about i had been cut out of projects because it was too noticeable i had been told by people to tone the limp down or lose the limp um so you you embracing it and making it part of who little james is so i didn't feel like i have to hide it now i can just focus on acting and being being little james um that made a huge difference and i realized the more i talked about it and the more i embraced it the more confident i was the more i was able to love myself and i the goal is to help other people you know do the same right well um when i cast you so you came in i remember the first time i met you was in an audition we had a callback and you walked in and i hadn't seen in the audition that you'd done via video because it's probably yeah it's just sitting yes i hadn't seen that you walked in i thought okay this is interesting yeah um he walks different than other actors who are auditioning for this role and the matting choice yes and you yeah exactly like uh hey could you maybe tone that down for this character yeah no um and uh and i thought well he's a really good actor number one so i want him in the show so that number one i want him in the show what do we do with this having a disciple who's disabled are you are you uncomfortable with that term oh no yeah that's yeah um and we just got a comment jordan love the passion and faith you bring to james your facial expressions and talent bring a great compassion and life to the role yes and that is absolutely true and i thought well i want this guy in the show i wanted to play little james and here's what we're doing i'm painting myself into a corner not because of working with you because you're great it's theologically and gospel wise how do we address the notion that jesus healed so many people and you're we're going to have a character played by someone with your condition who in this lifetime probably won't be healed i mean obviously anything's possible but god doesn't heal everybody and and uh and in many ways that can be a a way to draw you closer to god in some way but i'm just saying unlikely you're going to be healed in the next five years right so that means a little james isn't going to be healed in the next five years and so in episode three when we address that season three we're going to actually get into it and i'm curious like you haven't read the script yet but i i gave you a i i gave you a heads up i said little james is going to actually ask jesus okay what's the deal here yeah because there's a famous story in the gospels where jesus sent out actors sorry actors no disciples two by two for a period of time where they were healing and casting out demons and doing miracles and spreading the gospel doing all of the things that jesus can do and this is for this like specific period of time so he's asking little james go heal and little james in episode two i believe that season two goes okay i will but uh hint uh what about me and uh so i'm curious just from jordan's perspective yeah on the concept of healing and that you haven't been healed and some people are yeah and as little james seeing healings and nothing i'm just curious your thoughts on that i i'm sure if i recall i think you asked me a little while ago like uh or whenever you initially brought up the idea of including my disability into the in the character uh you had mentioned like and you you asked if i would even want to be healed like me personally me jordan um and if it was if you would ask me this when i was 15 and getting bullied every day um i would have said yes sign me up i want to be six feet tall walk straight and you know all that stuff but now um having seen how i can use that to help other people and even within my career now embracing it it's given me uh an advantage at times because um the fact that i lead with it i've noticed casting directors or producers or whoever being like oh yeah that guy with a limp like it's more of it's not the elephant in the room anymore it's this positive thing so um i think the idea that like you're not necessarily broken and you don't always need the type of healing you think you do um and uh i think that uh it's been very therapeutic getting to explore that through little james because it's like little james is a few steps behind myself and that process of like accepting and loving himself um and uh yeah so i just i used to view myself as broken but i don't need more now i see it as a strength and not a weakness that's awesome that's awesome that's humbling and uh and i told you this last year that you were an inspiration to me in so many ways by how you have not only this talent and hard work that you brought to the role but um the the the grit that you have to overcome what you've overcome and i mean i it's just it really is uh inspirational uh julie would you bring bring up the question you brought up uh two comments ago um i think someone asked about their uh his favorite scene yeah i don't remember so i don't remember who who asked it but just yeah if there's a question up i'll i'll get to it in a second and then you can you can uh leave it up so i can remember it because i'm not always good at remembering those so my favorite scene um probably it would be um i mean the the scene with thomas that we had mentioned doing that long one one shot was so much fun that came in like 10 minutes into the into the scene it was like one of my final conversations and by that point the camera guy was shaking literally shaking because uh it was such a long take and yeah we didn't often get to that to our like moment in the scene either because we kept having to cut but that and then the opening of season two where we're all slightly aged and just seeing all of some of my best friends older and like we're acting like we're we had just left the funeral of another one of our friends it was so emotional um i was that was the first time in my career that i've had a scene where i've specifically had to cry and i remember because in the the script it says i i was on my way to jerusalem but it cuts off and i'm supposed to start crying at that word so i was like man how am i going to do that 10 times um but as soon as i got in that room it was like it happened immediately and i remember after the first take you had to come over and just kind of put your you put your hand on my face and you were like not yet and i had to like pull it back and and uh but it came out every time just because of how the the energy in that room we were all just so focused and and it was emotional that was like a really really powerful moment yeah and you you're you're seeing partners in that where giovanni and george i know are good friends of yours yeah and uh and we have a cast that like a lot of times on on a lot of shows there's actors who are maybe more selfish so where they'll give their all when the camera's on them yeah they'll give their all in the cat when the camera's on them and then when it comes time for the other person's part and they're off camera they're not giving their all yeah and uh why it's funny that you mentioned jonathan is because jonathan um is one of those actors and in fact this is true of pretty much every actor we've got puts everything into his off camera yeah um and george was doing that too we really were i think the actors were creating a setting in which it felt like you were actually there yeah it really did yeah uh laurie says i'm the mom of a disabled son thank you for bringing disabilities into the show jordan thank you god bless all of you and that's the key uh for the show is the diversity not just of race which you see between the jews and the the israelites and the romans and the and people from other countries but also you know what we like to call neurological diversity why you have someone like matthew who's on the autism spectrum or physical diversity uh where you have someone like yourself and uh we we're really trying to show and because this is accurate it's not something we're doing for political reasons we're doing it because jesus spread the word to so many different regions and encountered so many different types of people and uh his message and his gospel was for everyone and i think it's cool on our show there are people who are like yourself watching going oh jesus can call me too yeah yeah um one last thing before we let you go question from ari i believe or re little james what is your favorite thing about playing a disciple um i think specifically with little james he's one of the lesser known disciples there's not a whole lot known about him you know there's some stories and traditions that like he was a singer and things like that that you can kind of piece a little bit together but getting to um bring life to a person and a character that hasn't really i don't think there's ever been another little james portrayed in any tv or or tv show or film so um getting to unless like maybe just kind of uh at least just another bearded guy you know we'll chime in every now and then so um getting to really flesh out little james and and bring him to life for the first time is um you know it's an honor it's it's really really exciting so yeah probably that awesome well thank you jordan thank you it's always good to see you and we are going to see you soon on set i can't wait we are hoping desperately to stay on schedule we plan on starting filming again end of april early may at the latest and uh i don't know if you'll be up first but you'll be up early yeah and we'll get right back into it can't wait yeah thanks so much no problem all right bye all right um so real quick uh we've we've got a couple of names of people who are uh who have just come across to me who have paid it forward over 500 which is really cool amy bob paddy terry dave and mike thank you so much i'm sure there's more um but thank you so much for paying it forward as as i've been talking about all uh tonight so far is uh we are in a situation where um we right now our reach is extending is what's the phrase a reach is ex it reaches extending our grasp what's this yeah there's a phrase yes our reach surpasses our grasp meaning we're reaching we're trying to go do more but we can't we can only grasp and someone in the comments is correcting me right now um but i think it's his reach extends his grasp i think that's the thing it's like it's farther than his his breasts can be and that's where we're at where we're trying to get this show to the world as many people as possible and we don't have currently the capacity to do so um all right so i'm going to bring on um uh kristen because we're going to introduce a video here and uh we've got more to come so stick around because kristen hi kristen hi there look we're twinsies oh my gosh it's like i'm gonna look like the lord told us what to wear today or something yeah that's exactly what happened it's that important it's that important now that i'm here you can actually head out i'll take over yeah no that's not right no okay okay but uh yeah these are the sometimes you gotta stir up the water our latest apparel which we introduced last month i'm actually we're about to show a video that you are in by the way yeah and i'm going to change my hoodie just for fun to my other favorites um but um you had an opportunity to uh visit the set uh just a couple days ago yeah it was great and so we're going to show this um this video in just a second and when we come back uh you'll talk more about what you've seen and we'll start taking some more questions and then we'll bring on uh jim cunningham and who's our production designer and um let's just go ahead and show that video now and then i'll and then i'll have you chat about it when we're done by the way that video it was so cold it felt like we were back at the sermon on the mount again that was it it was almost snowing this week in texas there were a couple days where it was below it was below freezing it was like in the 20s and this might have been during your interview yeah uh-huh okay oh yeah shivering sorry not sorry all right let's let's show that video right now and then we'll come back to you well hey there i am here with tad on the set on the developing set of the chosen and we have some updates for everyone don't we absolutely we're staying real busy here yeah um as you can see there's there's a lot that's gone on the last couple of weeks we've got parts of the framing for the synagogue going up zip wall going on the outside of that we're going to be working on that we've got our walls all of our masons are working hard getting things moved in over on this side uh you can see we're starting to put in all the footings for all of these these homes that are coming in here whether it's andrew's home or gaia's home wherever whatever building it might be they're all getting put in uh moving over here you can see that the dock has is well on its way to being completed so this is for the sea of galilee for for for capernaum you know so for capernaum yeah those are the docks at capernaum they're on the north end of the sea of galilee so you are working on capernaum but you're also working on the sound stage so share a little bit about where we're at in terms of the development of that yeah so the sound stage and the film complex is actually right across the lake over there um pretty exciting we've done a lot of work on that we're actually working on the additional layers of insulation and mass loaded vinyl and those things that make the sound stage sound um efficient so that the sound doesn't come in and also there's not a lot of reflective sound in that sound stage all of our buildings are about 95 percent right now for the other things whether it's props hair and makeup wardrobe the wood shop and the multi-purpose building so before we send it back to dallas here um what are some of the next uh steps for developing capernaum and the sound stage some really exciting next steps um we may get to see this but just up the hill here we've got a wood artist and what he's doing is he's distressing wood making it look realistic and old and those those logs that he's working on right now are going to be laid out on the dock to make all the dock planking and that's really exciting he's also doing a lot of the specialized doors and windows to give that that first century look those are some of the exciting things that we're doing along with moving on to all the structural steel and light gauge steel in the film campus wow and once the foundation is set you will start to build up the actual city correct just just like uh with with the synagogue we laid that that foundation a couple of weeks ago and we're already building the structure everything will start moving really quickly once all these foundations go amazing well thank you for your time and for you and your team and your hard work and we are so excited for season three once we get there thank you yeah all right so yes good job by the way thank you so this is kristen and uh she is of chris and chris fame and uh we brought on chris and chris to be kind of the eyes and ears of you and so one of the cool things about tonight is there we do this q a where we're taking questions and she has been spending the week figuring out what kind of the most commonly asked questions are right and then uh and then we'll tonight we'll look for some of those questions that you know capture the trends that you see what would you say before we get into a little bit of that and then we're going to bring on uh i'll have jim uh our production designer come out um what would you say you came away with most after being on the set just like when you were seeing the progress of the set you just like you're moving here right like yeah you're here now i'm here now i brought you on and you're seeing the progress what are you seeing just as someone who represents the audience because you're a fan of the show that's how you kind of came on to this kind of yeah thanks so much um but like what are you seeing being here like what what what what has surprised you about um about the progress of the chosen or lack thereof mm-hmm well it's neat because you know jesus you know from nazareth what good can come from nazareth that was a common thing and now we're in midlothian it's like what good can come from midlothian it's not like you're in la where you're expecting to see different sets and all the progress that way but way out in the middle of nowhere there's this gorgeous set being set up and built up and this team is working so hard and it's just it's kind of surprising because when i first watched the show a couple years ago i didn't know that it would really go so as far as it has now and um like i didn't think it would be more than a season or two but now it's such a privilege to be living here in texas i'm only 30 minutes away from set i get to come out here and watch the progress of this incredible beautiful set very intricate set and um it's just been a neat experience um in the middle of midlothian of all places yeah yeah and i think it kind of speaks to how the show is we just like yes we came from surprising circumstances and and here we are and you know and now the show is being filmed in surprising circumstances so speaking of that michael asks where when are you filming the feeding of the 5000 so the feeding the 5000 is taking place where um here yes i was giving you a really easy question is this a trick question yes yes it's being filmed here yes so uh but we don't actually know the exact date just yet i promise you that we are working on that we're working through the schedule now yeah um but you know every day matters and so if we shift schedule by a day well then that might shift the feeding the five thousand so um it's going we you know if you are a part of the feeding of the five thousand uh meaning you you paid it forward at a certain amount during that period of time because it's not it hasn't been available for a you know the whole time yeah it's just been this period of time then you should be getting emails from us and if you aren't getting emails from us about that and you're fairly confident that you should be or that you are part of the uh f5k as we call it um then uh make sure that you email the uh through like you just pull up your app email support or wherever you whatever emails you've ever gotten from us just respond and say hey i thought i was part of this and i'm not but you should be getting emails from us and about once a month we get an update we should have so email support the chosen dot tv if you're not getting support at the chosen dot tv um and that's another way by the way to get on our email list so we want to be able to send you emails and so that i mentioned earlier to start an account if you haven't done that yet but you can also just any time on it you want to email support the chosen dot tv support the chosen dot tv yes there is one question that's been coming in quite a bit from a lot of people who were gifted a spot at the feeding of the five thousand do we know who they would talk to because many of them are asking hey somebody gifted their spot to me but we don't know who to talk to would that be maybe which they would just email that same email yeah i mean yeah whoever is sending i mean they should be getting emails from a certain email address i don't think it's support but if you haven't gotten that or if you're just wondering and you can't just if you can't just hit reply to the emails you have gotten you're trying to start from scratch then you just click just email support the chosen dot tv support at thechosen.tv you'll get more information so i'm going to bring you back in a minute okay but i'm gonna send you off for for a few minutes while i talk to jim cunningham who is our production designer yes yes and then i'll bring you back to take more questions from you we'll see you soon all right james cunningham come on out james richard cunningham oh look you're wearing merch i know i mean gifts sorry i feel like i should speak in like a british accent or something yes because you're jim's jim's richard cutting out okay so scoot over a little bit so yeah so you're more in the middle there are you black black you're just disappearing yeah yeah i kind of did that purposely does this represent the heart yes yeah okay so this guy was my college roommate northwestern college in st paul minnesota uh over a long time ago yes over 20 years ago and we did theater together and um and then you on my very first thing i ever directed which was a short film um you came out and you were just going to work in the production design department and the production designer didn't show up right and like you're like what do you want do you want to do this and i'm like i don't even know what it means yeah but you're the production designer now right so jim was a production designer and uh let's talk about and then you've been on every project i've done since then including now the chosen your favorite um not an interesting yeah um what does what is it what does a production designer do what is your role so a production designer is i basically designed the look of the show so anything you see like sets well not costumes and makeup but yeah you what's interesting it used to be so back in like early days of film the production designer supervised the wardrobe supervised the prop supervised like everything that came in front of the camera right it has now shifted to where wardrobe has a lot more autonomy they they they did they do the designing but they do talk to you about colors and stuff like that yeah i still do talk to leia a lot and if there's if there are things that i do want to see yeah um i usually go to you and liala about it and but yeah anything like the actors touch or sit on or the whole world around it so i'm given the script and then we break it down and then we create the world of the chosen so it's uh and then you come and say there's not nearly enough money everything needs to be 220 sets that you've given me yes yeah these 40 extra pages all have sets in them interesting they all take new things yes yes we're not using what was your commentator you don't have you can use the same table over and over again can't you yes just change the the tablecloth no one will notice um so uh this uh from naya here uh thank you james for all you do for the show what's been the toughest thing you've done for the show oh geez yeah how long do you have oh my god i'm trying to think what is the yeah what would you say was the most stressed you've ever been thinking i don't know if we're gonna be able to pull this off i think it was in one through four the uh the miracle the fish it was by far uh our uh art director matt and i think was the first day that we started i said you need to find boat and you need to find a fish and um it was the week before and we well a couple weeks before we didn't have boats so we had boats made and literally the morning that they were supposed to shoot we didn't know they floated uh it was four in the morning my hands were freezing they pulled the boats off they put them together and lo and behold they they did float and so um we were painting it and dressing it that morning and uh so then the fish was probably the most difficult and we had bought a bunch of fish they showed up and uh the humane society that morning said we can't use them and so um it was a nightmare so i think i think that out of all of them was probably the worst what would you say was the best like what like what's the set you look back on and you go everything worked well from the beginning it was exactly what i hoped it would be or better actually i'd have to say it was the pool of bethesda it actually was a set that i had a little bit of an idea that we wanted to do too but uh once we started doing it and started putting it together it started turning into this thing that it was better than i had anticipated it was going to be um it was a big set and um but i think overall i think that turned out to be one of my favorites yeah the the yeah you didn't build the pool but you you decorated the heck out of it right and uh and that's a lot of it too you supervise the art director who draws a lot of this stuff and helps design it pictorially so we can make it right so that's jeff stabler who does an amazing job but you're also supervising the teams that dress the set and the props like the like the props department reports to you essentially because you're the one who's telling them this is what i want to see and it needs to match all this um and what's the most difficult part about that i mean you're essentially did you know when you when you got into this business you were not only going to be designing things but actually a boss of a significantly large department no i had no idea um i i never thought i was going to be doing this um i remember actually that first day we were on set that that first movie we all were in the circle that morning and um every you were like everybody wants your name and what your job is and i remember you were standing there and i said what is the name of my title again and um you were like a production designer i was like oh yeah but so this literally is a dream job i i literally had no idea that this was what i was going to be doing for life i mean a lot of the jobs that i had up to this point kind of turned into you know all led to this but i never thought i'd be doing this so i have two more questions for you one which comes from jeff here are there plans to reuse the sets that were previously used so that's something we joke about where it's like sometimes there are things that you just repurpose for for for uh you know set dressings that you repurpose for new sets but um but like when you build a set um like that's on the sound stage um you know then you take it down but we know we're going to be using it in a future season like simon's house for example but uh like what are some of the sets that that we've used in the past that you plan on using again uh we're gonna actually this season because we have so much to do this season we're building a city and all the other sets that you've created um we're actually using reusing most of the sets that we had last season that were on the sound stage so like the catacombs are going to be another set you'll have the catacombs would have been the beginning of episode four of season two when you see uh simon zee in training correct and that kind of you know looked like a you know a dungeon right so that was a set that was built for that purpose but you're we're not going to the catacombs again no but you're using those walls and all the structure for that and then we're also going to be reusing uh nadeem's uh living room or a dining room and his bedroom that jesus and was it james and john were sleeping in yeah so that's in episode one of season two when they're staying at fotina's house so fatina is the woman at the well and her wealthy older husband they're in that house where we've got them waking up in that big bedroom and then they're uh then they're eating together around so those those are two big rooms that you guys built where we're using those and the nomad we're gonna completely gut and turn into something else so so the nomad was the uh the bar that mary magdalene mary magdalene went back to where she was when she was uh struggling with her old demons yes uh you built this that was that was on a sound stage in texas and so you're gonna reuse those elements and something completely new um so one last thing um we heard from tad tad is the guy uh in that interview uh conversation with kristin ted is the guy who's overseeing the building project uh he's the contractor essentially um but you know this is ultimately your vision our vision you and jeff you know who kind of who designed it uh where are we at what is what is the thing you know when i came on and i said look one of the biggest stresses we've had has been this set and by the way this set is not being built by pay it forward money so some of you may think well why build this whole new set you know that could save us some money by not doing that that's not it's actually not being built by paid for money it's being built by outside uh outside money it's a long story but we're going to be actually renting this space um from and being able to use it on the salvation army property but um this is you know outside money along with these you know construction teams that are building this thing both the sound stage and this new capernaum village and um you're the one who gets to walk out there every day and see the progress yeah and uh or the lack thereof so i know that you guys have felt pretty stressed and i know we've had a lot of people who are praying for you and not recognize recognizing that this is like when it comes to filming production design the art department the construction department is the is the center we're always chasing them around and and so you know when we first start filming our first week they're on to the next spot building it for us and so there's times when we're filming and we look you know next door and you're building and getting ready for the next day because uh you couldn't do it until we were done using this particular set so it's it's a you never stop it's never you can never just relax and go the work is done now you can shoot on it so right now what is the biggest thing that i think that is causing you the most i don't know if concern is the right word time really yeah i mean we're starting on we're starting in april and uh we've had some big setbacks with weather we like you said with kovid we've had some setbacks um just uh logistically with the property we're on and we had some setbacks with um just getting the approvals and all that stuff so um but i did walk out there this afternoon i hadn't walked out there in two weeks we had because of the snow and some other things that had come up and the dock actually that we have built in the city is mostly done except for the platform on it and uh the synagogue has got some walls on it now and some other big walls are coming up so it was a little more encouraging than two weeks ago when i had walked out there yes you walked out there and they weren't able to work at the time because of different approvals that need to be and you're just like i think the most stressful thing is well i don't know if it's stressful but i i really have no control over how that goes over there usually i you know i can prod my crew a little more or come up with other creative ideas but this is completely out of my hands but we've got some amazing contractors and subcontractors helping us out and they love the project so i think we're on a good course i just pray it all keeps going well and tad is someone who desperately loves the project and wants to serve god by doing this and we every time i go check out the the set being built someone comes up to me and tells me how much they love the show and how thrilled they are to work on it and to be contribute to it and how this is their loaves and fish and uh and that even when they are delayed they could go find another gig but they want to stay and work on this uh until we finished yeah we have some great people doing it so uh it is a chosen family and and uh and amazing people on my team too i mean such creative people with big hearts and they love the project and uh yeah now we're and now we're officially in pre-production yes and i know you're like could we have delayed a little longer and we found like we got to get going which is puts more pressure on you than anyone uh but let's end on a high note yeah uh what scene in the chosen do you like the most if you watch it now it doesn't even have to be one that you're design wise but just when you saw it in the final video i have to say it's not one scene it's a one episode and that would be um season two episode four it was just uh it was there was so many departments coming together in so many scenes and there was so many sets and so many people and characters and it was just when i saw it i i literally weeped it was so beautiful and just akies did an amazing job everybody did an amazing job so yeah the cinematography the hair and makeup the wardrobe the props the set dressing the music the editing i mean everything came together it was like if you want to know what episode most represents all of the departments at their best it was episode four of season two for sure it was amazing all right brother all right this guy was he was in my wedding like i've known this guy for so long and uh so that means hey we we get to have the i mean think of how long we've worked together and how long we've been friends and we still like each other yeah so we we have the most intense arguments because we know each other the best and we kind of you know like an old married yes exactly um but we also uh sometimes just look at each other and go can you believe what right that allowed to do i mean this guy was i remember when we were doing the shepherd for my church he comes down from you know wisconsin where he lives and you know we're setting up and holding up walls on on a farm just to keep him from blowing over and uh and now we're seeing this extraordinary build it's really beautiful so crazy all right brother love you love you talk to you soon all right so um if you are still watching thank you it really means a lot because we still have a few more things to cover i want to get to more of your questions that aren't related to some of our guests so i'm going to bring kristen out in just a second for that but we're going to go through them as fast as i can julie will start popping up questions with kristin here and we'll just start answering them in just a moment um but again jim the guy you just taught the guy that you just heard from he bears so much weight on this project if you are a person of prayer i do ask that you pray for him and for his team i was just here a couple days ago um just to go over some of the sets and and little things happen all the time like there was a set we were planning on shooting in the first week and it's not um it turns out that it's it's not ready no it's not their fault it was a set we were so from someone else we were going to use and uh it had some like decay it's not ready and so we have to now find a new spot for it and um there's just so much to get down in the next two months that uh he is responsible for and um it's a lot of pressure a lot of weight and once we decide that the train is leaving the station and we're filming there's no turning back and he he his crew is now on the clock and they're working and we're chasing them and uh it's a very very stressful position and it never stops and so i just hope that you lift up jim and jeff his his partner in crime who's the art director jeff stabler um that you'll keep them in your prayers so we appreciate that and i'm sure he wouldn't mind uh you know knowing that because of all the reasons why season three is going to be more expensive than we planned um he's hoping that we don't have to say sorry we're gonna have to cut this we're gonna have to combine set so we're going to have to uh we're going to have to use something different than what you planned or designed because we just can't afford what we're doing so hopefully you'll keep that in mind as you make your considerations about whether you're paying it forward or not but again as always if you can't if we don't want to no problem we will find a way god will make a way for us when we are at the red sea um so i want to give you a very quick update uh this is oh comment just popped up and then hop down so it looked like it was a dvd comment someone in the chat can respond to you i want to give you this very quick update and then i'm going to bring in kristin and we're going to just do a rock and roll q a session but i just had the opportunity to speak at liberty university um this is a a college in virginia that's got 20 000 students or so maybe maybe a little less who's counting but uh while i had a chance to be there and speak i was on stage i got a chance to share the heart of the chosen i got a chance to share um the story of the chosen and uh i was also there with and you're seeing some of the some of this behind the scenes footage but i was there with lara silva who plays eden and liz tabush who plays mary magdalene and noah james who plays andrew and we got to share with all these students the room was jam-packed as you can see i had to share our hearts got just to share the story of the chosen and we are our goal in this is the in 2022 we are trying desperately to reach this generation in particular we're trying to reach everybody of course but generation z college students in particular uh we are trying to reach them with the chosen in ways and and reaching them is hard because they don't necessarily like you know most college students aren't on facebook which has been probably our number one social media platform but look at that line that you can see these are all people waiting to get to do a meet and greet with us and to get some things get some pictures taken derral eves my partner uh one of the executive producers had a chance to share with a class uh you can see right here we were we did a panel discussion for the cinema arts program uh there was well over 100 students in the room couple hundred students in the room um that we were able to share and then at the end of the night uh and on friday night we were able to show a documentary that we're working on that we'll show more of we'll talk to you more about in future live streams where we it's really extraordinary i can't wait to show it to you but we got to show it to these college students and get their feedback on our efforts to generation z um this is a generation that i'm passionate about but more more than even me is daryl is my partner who's super passionate about this and we want to reach this younger generation uh because if they are we are in competition with so many streaming platforms and social media platforms and uh messaging and uh the competition for their hearts and minds is fierce and uh yet when they do see the chosen they love it and uh and it was so moving to see their reaction to us um you know i didn't expect that from college students but they were so excited and such big fans of the show we want to keep that going and that's one of the things that when i talked to you earlier about marketing when we take that 25 percent from pay it forward and we put it towards marketing right away well a lot of times you put it towards what we would call fertile ground so you're putting it towards facebook which has been a big driver of things for us and you're putting it we're putting in areas where we get the most pay it forwards in return because that allows us to keep going and allows us to keep putting more marketing money into it but when we want to expand and we want to go to places that aren't as easy we want to go to platforms that might not have been as successful for other uh shows like ours um we got to do it anyway um we're that desperate to get to each and every person around the world and in every generation and sometimes it's not as fertile it's more challenging you have to cut through the noise better which sometimes means you have to spend more money sometimes means you have to try different things just to get them to watch the show and uh this was a big part of that and so um thank you for uh your support in allowing us to do something like that it was really a beautiful time and liberty is a great place for us to visit and see they really took good good good care of us and that was great to get that that message of the show to those students so kristin come on back and let's take some questions we're just going to go one at a time here and i'm going to try to get you let's see more into the middle here so there you go and then let's let's scoot in here's this okay too far back which makes me look like a a giant giant you kind of are already um and so what we want to do is uh julie and the team our social media team have been have been going through and trying to find the most commonly asked questions of the questions that are most relevant and putting them up and so let's start doing that right now julie if you don't mind what is what is the question that that we have been uh that someone has so excited chris how can we help you best oh that's another chris uh yeah chris kelsey yeah they're asking you though you're asking me yeah you i'm gonna let you answer this one how can they help well number one you can be praying every day for um the whole team and for the production and for the building of the set you can pay it forward if your heart leads you to do that uh what else yeah pay it forward is the is the financial way the primary financial way to help yeah but um you know also spreading the word spreading the word so one of the things um we haven't talked about yet is the app when you pull up the app um [Music] and you're on like the main like the main watch page okay there's a share button and you click that share button and it gives you an option to share the app so you can just literally text someone like a link to the app and then there's also clips and you can like and it also says oh what does it say there show me spanish spanish videos spanish and portuguese so like you can if you have someone as a spanish speaker you can you can share the videos in spanish but this allows you to you can actually download that clip to your phone and then you can post it natively to your social media platform or you can text it to a friend but like this allows you to share these um like these clips to your social media platforms directly as opposed to just sharing our posts so it's going to get more views when you share these clips but yeah this is a great way to uh to spread the word another way you can do it you can have your own watch parties you can have parties with your friends bring them over i do that a lot i lost i love watching the show with lots of different people yeah and you're not you're not someone who's shy about telling other people i love people yeah so i go to the grocery store i go to the gas stations i tell everyone almost everywhere i go so that's another way you could do it too great all right next question does making purchase oh from ron rubinstein does making purchases from the gift shop help with production costs so do you know the answer to that because i did talk about it earlier tonight so um making uh sorry purchases from the gift shop goes towards um oh i forget exactly maybe you need to say it you i'm so cold right now i can't even think it feels like you're on the side of the mountain all over again we are in the set we are on this on the property of the chosen in our makeshift studio and it's not heated um and i love it but you have the you have the you know the insulation of a squirrel so you're probably not like yeah you're not exactly as warm as i am i do know the answer to that it goes towards the paying of the salaries for the staff so yeah well not just salaries but yes equipment and all that kind of stuff so the staff of the chosen so that includes you you are a staff member so your salary is not paid for by pay it forwards it's paid for by the chosen gifts.com and things like this and so we have now approximately julie how many full-time employees do we have right now probably 30. i think it's more but she said 28 but she knows better than i do so let's just say it's 28 but it's more increasingly more that's full-time people and none of that comes that is separate from production production is when we are making the actual show itself and so um so no we do not now when we are in a pinch or let's say we're in a situation where like all right we gotta like you know time you know we've got we've got an emergency we've occasionally done that um certainly more in the early years but we try to avoid that we try to keep the company separate from the uh the production and so uh production is paid for almost entirely by pay it forward amazing and we do not take pay it forward money and put it towards the company uh the chosen company um daryl is constantly saying this and of course i agree like pay for money is sacred money and we tell people exactly where it goes towards and we're never going to take it and put it towards something else um that we that that we have not explicitly told them is going towards which i said earlier marketing and uh production costs and legal and hard costs and all that kind of stuff right all right what's next all right wanda and oxen and i'm so sorry she is very norwegian wow me too i did the movie how i am i am my name doesn't sound that way did the movie help fund the series a lot of people are wondering yeah yeah so that was she's referring to the christmas with the chosen um and so that is not it was in a movie first just to give you the you know just so we're clear that was the christmas special we did with the brand new episode and um so yes we actually shockingly we were not planning on this we actually ended up profiting from that uh which was which is a miracle because most movies never profit in theaters you you come out in theaters you you try to make enough to to share production call to you know to kind of cover some things but you don't even break even usually it's usually break even in streaming and dvd and all that kind of stuff and uh the the reaction was so huge that we ended up uh profiting so yes um we some of that money we immediately put towards uh casting crew from like like like some of our regular actors who like are gonna be with us in season three and stuff like that like we're trying to put some of that towards and anywhere we can towards future seasons because uh because the show is free and most actors will get what's called residuals from like a streaming platform or a network television or dvd sales so they get residuals from the chosen from dvd sales and from the occasional streaming platform but because the show is free there's not traditional residuals so anytime we can we're trying to give them you know uh reward for being in the show and that was an opportunity even for some who weren't in the movie so it's essentially a bonus it can be sometimes for for a future we kind of apply it towards future season uh salaries um where we can and then um yes so some of that is gonna go towards uh future seasons future episodes and seasons but we haven't gotten that money yet so all right anna b what resources other than the bible do you do you use to help keep the chosen as historical as possible especially in the case of the lives of the disciples are there books you can recommend or videos so that's a really good question i mean there's tons and tons we know we have a we have a consulting team you know so dr doug huffman and rabbi jason sobel are our primary uh consultants along with father david guffey but they provide some of the biblical and historical context my co-writer tyler is a biblical historian himself we use a lot of online resources um other than the bible can you keep would you mind keeping that up just a little bit longer julie um um she says especially in the case of the lives of the disciples so some of that yes we do look at some of the books of what's called the apocrypha which is these are books that didn't make it into bible canon and some of those are very good reasons so we don't look at those as gospel but some of that has really interesting information some of which may or may not be true we assume a lot of it is true just didn't quite make it into scripture um and so that there's also jewish historians who work you know that's where we find some of the information about what they wore because the bible doesn't say exactly what they were all the time i'm getting a phone call right now oh shoot you want to get it i can it looks like it's so some of that um there's so many things that were written in around the time of the bible that aren't the bible that you can still find information and resources from um so in terms of books we recommend um i mean you know we it's hard to find one and i'm sure we'll probably suggest one and someone will say it's not good probably um but uh but yeah we use a lot of different resources and online what's funny is you go online and there are really good resources but some of which contradict each other and so uh especially when it comes to jewish history it's harder because they didn't uh not only did they not take pictures back then i don't know if you knew this no i didn't yeah really yeah they weren't taking pictures in the first century but uh the jewish people weren't even doing paintings and drawings uh at least especially religious jews because they believed that was idolatrous and so you're not supposed to uh so there's it's very you know it's usually the greeks and the romans where you find most of that that kind of stuff so we got a a question here from lj another question oh right okay uh when we express concern about misre representing god's character portraying jesus as winking twice why did you ignore us and then complain about our comments publicly to the duck dynasty cast oh okay so i'll start in the end and work my way backwards so when i was on the doug dynasty podcast i made a comment like i was talking about some of the complaints we get and i made a joke about sometime i said we get we occasionally get to complain about someone who is bothered by jesus winking i didn't call out anybody by name lj is identifying um as one of the people who was one of the complainants um one of the reasons why i made jokes about it i don't think i complained because i don't it doesn't bother me that much is uh because i actually thought it deserves a little bit of a joke i don't think that's a very a question that i actually would take very seriously i think uh i think some people who who think that jesus would never have winked are referring to a verse in proverbs that talks about that uses one of the translations uses the term winking in context of people who are deceptive and um so it's like shame and woe to those who are deceptive and the dimensions people who wink the notion that that means you're not supposed to wink ever and that is i i think a silly or not i think it is a it is a silly notion and so uh we don't take all questions or comments uh extremely seriously and so if you happen to believe that it misrepresents god's character to show jesus doing a very um loving and charming wink at somebody then uh we're just going to be on different pages yeah so i don't think it at all misrepresents guys that's something i was thinking about today i was thinking you know what yeah people you know they're like oh jesus didn't do this or you guys are saying you know jesus did this and that but it's not really about that as much as it is like what the chosen is doing is portraying his character and who he really is i was thinking about that today i was like yes he might not have winked maybe he did but he was probably playful and that to me has changed the way that i see jesus as so um just involved with my life and joyful and so yeah i might not say it in the bible but it is still portraying these characteristics that i think we need to know i i know i've believed a lot of lies about who god is and so this show has helped me to really yeah break down break those things down through some of the things we watch and there are things that some people like the person who asks that question who think that some of the things we portray are not only not necessarily in scripture but that they actually contradict jesus's character and i think that's fair to consider and our primary goal is to never contradict the character of jesus or the gospels i just think the notion that jesus winking contradicts his character i think is a really silly notion and so i'm not going to be personally insulting towards anybody but i am going to sometimes uh we we just don't take every question and don't take every concern um super seriously and that's not to disrespect the person themselves i'm sure that people have uh reasons to disagree but um i don't think that we necessarily have to uh we don't have the time or the capacity to take every single question and so occasionally i'll just make a joke about it because i think it's really funny to to think that jesus winking at someone is like a violation of of god's character right um so but uh that said um we don't uh we we do of course love all of our our viewers including those who disagree with us occasionally but not everything is treated with the same weight right all right this is a great question a lot of people have been asking karen simmons says i love the children in season one will they be returning in future seasons i know so they did two of them returned in uh later in season one remember um uh here's the problem with some we thought about it and it may happen it may not i'm not gonna i'm not going to share of course but one problem you have to remember is that they are older they're like a foot taller yeah and so in the timeline of the show they might have grown long past how much they'd grow in the timeline of the show and so therefore it's a little tougher to to uh to cast them again it would be cool to and we may we may find a way to do it but if we don't that may be one of the reasons which is right that they just look significantly older than they did in the you know than they would have in in it within the context of joshua's voice is probably much lower these days than or not quite yet he's a little young for that yes all right 70 acre studio will we get to see the sermon on the mount but we get to see this yeah so oh right right okay so the reason i'm always i'm always intrigued by this question because some people say oh i thought we were gonna see the sermon on the mount in episode eight i'm bummed that we didn't well i think you did actually see a good chunk of the sermon on the mount probably the the most famous part which was the beatitudes you just didn't see them as delivered on the mountaintop or the you know the hillside that we portray jesus as being on but what the question is is in season three will we see more of jesus delivering the sermon on the mount and you were there yes for the filming i will allow you to answer this question there will be no more of this sermon on the amount yes there will be so we sent an entire afternoon filming there were a number of scenes that we did film so you will see more which i'm excited to see we've we filmed jesus uh uh well kid jonathan as jesus yeah delivering more of the sermon on the mount uh with the crowd there and uh so season three will pick up where season two left off and get you more of the seminar not the entire thing we're not going to just show 30 minutes of jesus preaching um but we will show you some key moments from the sermon on the mountain wonderful okay squirrels eight do you think you will visit other colleges uh i'm sure we will uh yes i mean that's again because that's part of our uh when we have time that that is part of a of an initiative um for sure that we that you know for this year we want to be reaching um more people and especially college students and sometimes the only way to reach them is to actually go to the college what about colleges in canada no oh my gosh i'll try to loosen some of your uh yeah get the truckers you know yeah i'm not gonna get into all that don't get into everything um but uh yeah someday i will go to canada and i've never i've actually been to canada once which part you probably don't remember vancouver no it was the toronto area of course um yeah i've been i've been there once edmonton is probably the best city in the entire country of canada that's where i'm from they're all equally all right let's move on before i get so disheartened debbie savino a question how do you get everyone to use the same accent do you have accent classes uh so we have a um a specialist like a a um blanking on the name um dialect uh a dialect coach um so we have dialect coached named melissa dalek coach named melissa who does a fantastic job and even those actors who have already acted in the show um will come back for like a you know each season to kind of get a refresh and listen to themselves again and her job is to fine-tune the accent for that particular person so there were lots of accents back then just like there are lots of accents today and so uh we when we land on the accent that we want for that person then she's focused in on that one not just a one size fits all so um so that yeah so then when new actors come on board she's like all right are they middle eastern are they um uh roman are they greek or is this gonna be uh like an african like type like ethiopian accent um or uh asian pacific or turkish you know we we try to we try to have different accents and so yeah we have a coach who then meets with them for usually about an hour or so and uh and then follows up with some very good have you learned the accent yourself uh well they're like i said do you want it accents oh okay the roman you're the romance yes yes i've got i've got romano i've got gaius's accent down perfect i've nailed that i'm just going to say that i've got all of the accents perfectly and then i'm just not gonna prove it great okay uh next one here we go donna watson i i guess a question i've had is are are the actors under contract to finish the series okay so a lot of people are concerned that all the some of the actors might not be coming back i've heard this a lot yeah so complicated question and i'm not going to get into all of the details obviously because contracts are um are confidential um i will say that we do have contracts yes for multiple seasons for those actors who are going to be here for the life of the project um and yet that doesn't necessarily mean that our show is in what's called first position meaning so when we say look we're gonna be starting on this date and and and you're contracted to to show up on this date you know for x amount of uh money and whatnot then yes um but sometimes an actor might have an uh another obligation that came before season three showed up or before season four for example because season four is not coming until next year and so if they uh you know if they get a gig then of course hopefully they're gonna let us know and we're gonna try to try to work with it and try to accommodate where we can um but yeah the the the hope is i mean some of this stuff i can't really talk about so it's just more noticed but um we we anticipate in uh having you know our recurring characters uh around for the life of the show so jesus will be coming back is what you're saying he'll be in this next season jonathan that's hope let's hope he shows up elisa dc have you ever questioned why the bible isn't more descriptive that's a good question why are we never told of jesus smiling etc is wondering why scripture doesn't give us more something you have ever struggled with hmm that's a really interesting thought yeah so what they're referring to is the fact that our show gives a lot of stuff that personality quirks and all this kind of stuff and then you're they're like well this isn't in the bible why isn't it in the bible yes um so i think an interesting question would be what reason would a gospel writer have to say that jesus smiled so what was the purpose of the gospels the purpose of the gospels was to show that jesus was the son of god and the messiah and so they showed as many of the of his greatest hits and so when you read the gospels most of it is jesus did this jesus said that for the purpose of proving who he was matthew was focused on what we would say son of man he was uh you know he was came matthew took the whole first chapter to uh of his book to talk about his lineage and uh and and the gospel of john we we say focuses on jesus as son of god um and so luke is more um you know more historically based you know so he was he came in after the fact and was like alright i've interviewed a bunch of people here's what i've seen so but the primary purpose of all of these books is proving jesus was the son of god not proving that he was funny proving that he had uh you know all of the times that he said hello and came over for dinner um now we do know that jesus was funny because we see things like jesus saying to the pharisees for example i heard this from a from a scholar the other day talking about the humor of jesus when he said uh you saw this in uh episode seven of no episode six of season two when jesus encounters the pharisees who are so upset that he just healed on shabbat and he talks about he goes have you not heard of david the story of king david that's actually quite funny that's him being snarky that's he's talking to pharisees of course they've heard of king david of course they know that story he would do things like that often so we can we can pick up on certain personality traits um but yeah i think the but the reason the bible wasn't more descriptive is because that wasn't the purpose of the bible the purpose of the bible was to to show jesus greatest hits and prove that he was the messiah purpose of a show is different i'm not making this show to prove that jesus was the messiah um that's a nice f that's a nice result of the show if it happens for some people but it's not my job uh that that's that's between them and god and the best source to find that out is not the show it's what kristen the bible the bible yes very good and uh so no for a minute but yes the bible yes the bible dallas that was so cool yeah if you would have hesitated longer have been like kristin you're not helping people think we're replacing the bible no we're not no so the bible is the best source for that stuff we are trying to make a show that is entertaining that is enjoyable it's fun to watch it also shows you more of who jesus is in a different way than what you've seen before but the ultimate purpose of the bible is different than the purpose of our show and that's where um that's why i think you're not seeing some of the things that we include yeah very good andrea noel asks a great question a lot of people are wondering this we see we saw lazarus in the messengers will we be seeing much of him and his sisters in the upcoming season a lot of people are wondering about mary and martha yeah um so are you allowed to say that probably not yeah i will say that um in upcoming seasons you will see lazarus mary and martha at length will you see them in season three maybe oh that's a great way to answer that question yeah okay all i can tell you is that when we do introduce lazarus and mary and martha it will again be in a different way than what you typically expect yeah it's not like jesus just shows up and first time he sees lazarus is when lazarus comes out of the tomb um that's not the way we do things with the chosen we want you to know the people that jesus is impacting as much as possible and we know that jesus wept when he heard about lazarus and we know that mary and martha spoke to him as though they were close so we want to show you the before i am so excited for that great all right faithful woman of god bible studies says do you enjoy working with all the different faiths or is this or is it sometimes difficult um so i assume this means people people of all different faiths or is it sometimes difficult so uh yes of course i mean i enjoy i'm jo i enjoy working with anyone who is a good person to work with i mean you don't have to be of a certain faith to be a jerk right and you don't have to be of a certain faith to be a good person to work with and you certainly don't have to be of a particular faith to work hard for this show and contribute something great to the show and spread it around the world so um i would say to the question of is it sometimes difficult it is never difficult to work with someone of a different faith unless they happen to be a difficult person but their different faith or their different faith background has nothing to do with that we have people of all faiths who work on the show we have people of all uh lack of faiths who work on the show atheists and people i mean if you can think of a faith tradition or a lack of a faith tradition someone is on working on the show from that perspective and uh that's never difficult as long as they work hard and they contribute to the show that's that's the standard that we want people to meet when they work on our show uh the only difficult part that ever happens is uh is in the chat you know for of of like you know our social media posts for people who get upset because we're working with someone of a different faith or they get into a fan club or they get into the comment section like i love this show and then someone says i'm lds and i love the show i'm catholic and i love the show i'm evangelical and i love the show and go wait a minute you're not supposed to be here why would you like this show i'm the one who understands you know who jesus is and you have a different faith and then they start arguing and squabbling and stop focusing on jesus um and uh that's the only difficult part but for me and for us on the project uh some of their some of the i mean all of the best people most of the best people come from different faith traditions and uh it's been a it's been a beautiful thing we have a great team in the cast and crew and in our uh our the chosen staff and uh it's been it's been one of the great joys i think of the project actually is to learn more about some of the other faith traditions and to see the chosen growing in popularity among different faith traditions that have never before been enjoyed the same things that perhaps evangelical so i'm an evangelical you're an evangelical right um and uh and so when we're focusing on the jesus of the gospels um it's been really interesting to see how many different faiths traditions have embraced the show it's been really cool all right let's see tina cremarco what is your most memorable shot filmed in season one and or two the fog no the fish keep going well the fog the miracle the fog which we talked about in our previous um our uh uh there's a video on our youtube channel if you go to uh it's the three miracles uh is what it's referring to and we talked about that that shooting uh when there was such heavy fog we couldn't film and then the fog cleared in like less than five minutes right as we were about to leave uh so that was certainly memorable but i would say um you know the the one shot that we did in season two um that was also we also got into more detail in that three miracles video where we were taking you uh in one shot it was like 14 minutes long and uh and that was extraordinary um and it turned out beautifully and we're really proud of it that was certainly memorable i'll never forget the season one episode for the miracle of the fish jim talked about that earlier that was just pulling that off and all it took to do that was something else um and some of the most memorable shots usually came when we were the most desperate and not sure what was going to work and not sure if it was going to work and how we were going to pull it off and then somehow it got pulled off better than what we expected or anticipated and could do ourselves which let us know that god god was uh was given sprinkling uh some of his his uh we don't call it magic but some of his blessing on to us to allow us to pull some of those things off you should definitely write a book on that one day all the miracles have you ever thought about that yeah have you ever written anything before a little bit a couple things amanda and i uh amanda's actually in this room i won't bring her on right now but she has written uh yeah devotional books yeah someday we should do a book on what has happened um with this show wonderful okay rocia martin when and how did you know that this is your calling in life um i would say when i was in high school um i saw the movie one floor of the cuckoo's nest with jack nicholson have you ever heard of that movie no i i smiled as if i did i know i know i was like that's safe oh everyone knows now that i would say i'm going to expose that right now you're way older than me so i've never even anyway um so the chosen oh sorry i got distracted for a second um one of the cuckoo's nests came out in the 70s yes before you were born that doesn't mean you can't still watch it it's still available starring jack nicholson and it's one of the greatest movies of all time and i saw it when i was in high school and as soon as i saw it i went whatever that is i want to do that um and uh that is when um i i kind of set out on a path towards something like this and then it was about 10 years later when i when i felt like god was calling me to do something specific more towards faith-based filmmaking faith media as opposed to just general it was kind of like what can you do that others maybe can't do um and also why do something that others already are you know so hollywood has plenty of other movies that are being made by people who have a different perspective than i do what is what's something that i could bring to the table and that's one of the unique things with my faith and i and so kind of giving my career to god happened uh probably about ten years ago so yeah that was and then the chosen came as as you know from from my movie bombing right so real quick going back to that movie that i've never seen what about it specifically made you say whatever they're doing like i want to do that um i think god kind of put that on my heart um so sorry i'm getting are you texting in the middle of a live stream yes um sorry so um yeah this this um i think god just really place it on my heart like i want you doing want you doing projects for me okay and uh and for my people okay and uh and what's funny is of course the chosen is for so many more people than i've ever experienced before and people of all different faiths and lack of faith and people who aren't even believers um and yet it's come from me focusing on a jesus show which you'd think would be counterintuitive like oh jesus show means only going to be for christians but it's been uh it's been it's been way more than so let's just do just a couple more questions and uh and then we'll wrap things up oh this is a big one lots of people want to know this cheryl emra asks how are you and your family doing adjusting to texas life and weather uh well um in terms of the weather i mean uh you know we we would prefer i think traditional seasons um there but this is kind of an odd place for weather but we're adjusting lovely we love texas um our kids our youngest kids are of course they moved in the middle you know of their you know high school and middle school lives so that's been challenging of course for them but uh but yeah we love it here and i love the people it's been great that's so good yeah we plan to be here have you experienced any of the big texas bugs yet like big bugs i have they're disgusting yes i don't know if i want to stay here but i think the lord has me here yeah they're fine um yeah let's do it let's bring in a couple more questions all right lisa sherry what's your greatest prayer need right now um so i would say what we've been talking about tonight which is um the fact that right now we are in a we are what we would call a red sea moment where um the things we have scheduled to do won't happen at our current rate of finances and time so we made the decision we're moving forward anyway and um and so you know we we just couldn't delay anymore and so that creates financing gaps and it creates time crunches that we currently if we if we did it through normal means and we did it at the pace we're currently on financially and schedule wise we won't make it so but we decided to move forward anyway so that requires like a chosen thing to do that requires lots of prayer that's the faith that's a prayer all right so with that um uh we will close and oh we got one more oh the his history bounder asks who is the biggest goofball on set um george no he's up there no noah noah's up there for sure there's just people who have like different personalities um but these what's that jordan you come up here you tell you tell us jordan's here i was uh i just mentioned joey uh who plays thomas okay what makes him the biggest proof he's one of those people that um like he's always prepared and he always gives a great performance but no matter what the scene is like it could be a super emotional scene and right before we're rolling he's like cracking jokes and then as soon as we start rolling he's able to you know get into that that place but um yeah joey and then george as well uh he's someone that you never quite know if he's serious or not because he's always doing bits and and little voices and characters and stuff like that um so yeah those two cool yeah thank you bye um i saw this question janet said what was the email about you not being a part of the chosen this looks like you are still part of it was that a scam i just put that put that question up just because i think it's funny i have no idea who that's talking about and um yeah not a scam and i'm still part of the chosen and i don't recall ever saying i wasn't part of the chosen so uh i just thought that was funny um fabiola gonzalez which was the most emotional scene for the set uh for the set oh that's an interesting question we'll close with this one so um yeah and she mentions nicodemus with jesus um that that scene in episode seven of season one was um really emotional between jesus and nicodemus uh jonathan and eric where we were there for the day and um nicodemus uh has this moment where jesus is calling him and saying you know follow me and you'll see more and eric just could not get through that answer um and and it was just really overwhelming and then there's that scene moment later where he says um you know my heart is filled with fear and wonder and can tell me nothing except that i am standing on holy ground and uh couldn't say it without weeping um and uh and told me it's like i apologize i just can't get through this line without weeping and i and uh and he's like i'm not sure why and i said i think i know why um and it was just one of those moments where we have those a lot where uh where i think um the story we're telling the scene we're showing the line that's being said is just um is is transcendent and uh it really impacts people emotion on an emotional level and for sure the scene where we were filming with the actors ten years after jesus's death the opening of season two the actors were all in this place putting themselves into that position of jesus has died little james was just murdered for his faith this could potentially happen to us what does that mean we're now gathered for his funeral um what is that going to look like and what does that feel like and the actors putting themselves in that position um really um really was intense and so that whole day was kind of a heavy heavy emotional day so i'm going to wrap up with this um uh i've got a note here that i wanted to share with you and if there's more questions um then of course you can always uh you know continue to ask them on in on social media and reach out to us um but um we got every now and then i'd love to just share with you the impact of this that the show is having because that's the ultimate goal so when i talk to you about paying it forward and when i talk to you about the need for it um it really isn't i hate doing it from from the perspective of you know we we need money because we have to afford the set we need money because we have to afford our cast and crew that's of course literally true and we're in a position right now where we're challenged but the reason that you pay it forward is more uh for this um i've watched the show and both seasons over and over again i don't watch tv but when i'm in the mood the chosen is my go-to while i was watching it last night while my roommates began to arrive home out of curiosity they say to watch it with me during episode they said they said they wanted to watch it with me during episode three i guess they'd watched one or two episodes and and before they go into their rooms as they don't like to watch tv typically and she shows a moment from episode 8 when jesus is speaking with nicodemus got through the entire season in one night so they were watching a scene and they got caught wrapped up in it and they ended up watching the whole season in one night when i asked their opinions the next day they said it was so different i had goosebumps my roommates don't go to church they don't read or even read heaven read the bible and said they connected with every episode one of them said he's going to watch it with his parents this weekend your show has changed my life and now i'm blessed to share with others that feel led to share it as well that's from ashley now the reason that some of the english was broken is because she's saying she's in another country and there were some of her roommates that don't read the bible and some of them don't even read and the imagery and the they as they were walking by heading to their room because they don't normally watch tv cop they they caught up with it and uh it caught it caught their attention and um that is that is what we're going for is for impact and for the fact that as i mentioned early on well over 90 sorry well over 95 that's a that's a conservative number well over 95 percent of the people who see the chosen see it for free and and and haven't and likely won't pay it forward themselves which is is a optional payment and um and so that's why we do it and so we can look at that number and go you know what we're going to stop we're going to slow down because not enough people are paying it forward and so we're going to stick with what we're doing and stay smaller like we were two years ago and even a year ago i mean this show is growing so fast and when these other countries are reaching out to us and saying what can you can you help us with social media can you do marketing here you know we want to share the word about the chosen we want to tell people to come and see and we lack some of the resources can you do it how quickly can you get the translations to us and we could say you know what we just can't so we're just going to stay where we're at because so few people actually end up paying it forward and we could do that or we could go you know what we got to keep growing we got to keep growing bigger and we've got to keep these efforts up and we've got to replicate them in other countries and we've got to replicate them to other generations and to groups of people who haven't discovered the chosen quite yet because we haven't been able to expand our efforts and our marketing efforts just yet and we could do that or i could occasionally just come to you on a live stream and say here's what we're trying to do here's what we want to do if you want to do that with us here's how and as i say every time again we're not a non-profit this is optional payment this is not a donation this doesn't give you a tax deduction um it doesn't give you an investment that happened in season one that was an investment um so again if you're someone who um who you know wants to think of this in that way like a non-profit and you only want to donate then that's fine you don't need to just watch the show for free or if you're someone who has an issue with the show and or you're not sure or you're questioning um where i stand on things or you saw something i said that you didn't like or you saw a moment in the show and you're like well i don't know that i want to support this show until i see all seven seasons so if you want to wait until you see 56 episodes of the show before you feel confident to know that you know we we stayed within the boundaries of the character and intentions of jesus and the gospels and then you think you know what these 56 episodes of the show were worth this much to me and i want to share it so that the show i want to contribute something so this show can continue to expand that's up to you and i'm that's why i never say please please just please pay it forward uh that's between you and god to decide you don't have to i'm just letting you know where we're at and uh as of this moment this may change someday someday we may be in a situation where all the seasons are paid for and i get to just do live streams with you that are just fun and i can just tell you all the fun cool things and the new gifts that we're offering and all that and um that's a you know that may happen we may we may have a situation that rises like that um but as of now occasionally i just have to come to you and say here's where we're at here's the situation we're trying to do more uh than we can then uh then we can currently and um you're gonna have to help make that happen by choosing to uh to contribute or to pay in this optional way so uh thank you for that and um and for those of you who do pay it forward i thank you but those of you who don't i thank you as well for spreading the word about it for engaging for following us on social media keep that up and continue to uh spread the word about the show and again to just one last thing to make sure that when i uh when you when you get the app on the phone that you change your notification settings so remember you go to that lower right corner in your app where you see that little head and shoulders you click on that and you make sure that you do get notified notified by us and also that gives you an opportunity to start a little account with us and then you'll be able to start receiving emails from us as well so that's ways that you can really help us out because that gives us the opportunity to communicate with you we won't spam you we won't bother you but then you'll have the more information you have the more opportunities you have to connect with us and we have to connect with you then you won't miss out on some of these opportunities uh to participate in getting this show out to a billion people uh we want a billion people to know and see um the uh authentic jesus and this question just came up actually um why don't you allow advertisers and commercials as another source of funds no no it may happen but right now the commercials that you see are occasional um and rare but they sometimes come and it's usually just me talking in at the beginning of an episode where i just share with you um how you can get involved and how you can help the show um we may be in a situation where eventually where we take ads but i don't know we're trying to be as customer friendly as possible and we just want you to enjoy the show and then if you choose to contribute you can and joe asks do you ever have doubt um i have doubt in myself sometimes i have doubt that we can pull off some of the things that need to be pulled off ourselves but i never doubt that i serve a god who makes mountains move and giants fall and uses songs of praise to shake prison walls so i speak to my fear and i preach to my doubt because he's been faithful then and he'll be faithful now and those are lyrics from the song faithful now from vertical worship if you haven't heard that song it is awesome and go check it out now faithful now from vertical worship and that's what i do to my doubt preach to it so remember it is not your job to feed the five thousand it is only to provide the loaves and fish thank you for the loaves and fish that you provide god bless and i will talk to you soon how is it being back here in texas that's kind of it's cold it's cold but it's good [Music] so [Music] what they've done for the series the chosen is a remarkable even divine undertaking 2 000 extras how'd you do it i mean how on earth [Music] literally tens of millions of people around the world are going to see the work that you've done this year this season and i'm very grateful because you've made me so much better and you've made the show so much better than it could ever be and i really appreciate it and that is a wrap on season two of the chosen we feel the need to get seasons three through seven out to you as soon as possible each episode will be released as soon as it's done i rarely get nervous tonight there's a twinge of nervousness i gotta be honest with you this is big episode one of season two i cannot thank you enough it's the privilege of a lifetime let's get to it yay episode 2 is here remember when i told you that as soon as we had episodes done we would show them to you so how about we just show you episode 3 right now [Music] texas has been amazing to the chosen [Music] to finally meet blessed are the poor in spirit [Music] now it's time to get into a billion people everybody i talk to says that the chosen is superb worldwide phenomenon millions and millions of download streams people are loving it season one season two in honor of million subscribers the phrase bible preach has become a phrase that dallas and i say to each other that's the heart of this show i love the show i love this man but who cares it's a show bible preached the winner of the caleb for film and television impact the chosen dallas did you have any idea that this would be so wildly successful because it sounds like hollywood did not expect it no hollywood did not see this uh coming i i actually wonder if they still have not seen it coming yet what's happening with the chosen around the world is incredible as many languages as as we can possibly hit we want to hit i went to italy we were invited by the vatican to come meet the pope this was an extraordinary opportunity to get this show in front of more people [Music] [Music] we made a brand new episode of the chosen i honestly i don't know how we did it the number one release in the entire country our first night number one in the entire country the second night [Music] the last 12 days have been unbelievable [Music] i just want to say thank you for an extraordinary season i hope and pray that season two impacted you because a lot of people put so much of their heart and souls into it [Music] throw me like this down in the water watch the mud rise [Music] trouble [Music] in between [Music] trouble [Music] [Music] use me till i'm scraping the bottom make my will run dry shake them coins i know where you got them kiss me kiss me bye i should have known we'd bring trouble trouble gonna find you [Music] and the only thing that happened was this stranger in between you can say your eyes are open you might think your hands are clean until the wind blows in the dirt kicks up the ways [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] travels [Music]

Channel: The Chosen

Views: 255,488

Keywords:

Id: OCZtDk8IYWY

Length: 142min 5sec (8525 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 27 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/flydoublen13]

Sitting and watching a 2hr stream is great and all, but if someone could provide a TLDW after it, I'll love you forever

[u/Jcpowers3]

I hate that all YouTube videos have someone making that stupid face

[u/[deleted]]

I mean no disrespect to Dallas and I love the Chosen but I am beginning to get a little burned out on him and would prefer he spend his energies working on season 3 and not so many extras and side projects.