If you’re aiming to make a TV show about the life of Jesus, you better cast the right person for the lead role. Because no one—no one—has altered the arc of history more. Even folks who harbor no small amount of suspicion about whether or not Jesus was (and is) who he said he was (and is) have to admit the globe-circling scope of his influence. Want to make a counter argument for, say, Caesar? Jesus’s reach through the church’s witness outpaced the spread of the Roman Empire in ways no emperor could have ever imagined—and the Empire itself has long been relegated to history’s dustbin. Want to prop up someone from America? The country’s impact (and that of any of her influencers) is limited to just a little over two hundred years; Jesus was born of a story that’d been at a rolling boil for thousands of years before he walked the earth.
If Jesus laps everyone else with regard to history-making—and he does—you have to get his story right. And if you want to get his story right, you have to get the casting right. Which is why past directors, be it for their movie, stage production, or TV show, have cast people like Max von Sydow, Victor Garber, Liam Neeson, Willem Dafoe, Christian Bale, Jim Caviezel, Ewan McGregor, John Legend, and Joaquin Phoenix. If you’re keeping score at home, that list’s comprised of people who have more than a few Oscars, Grammys, and Tony Awards to their name. And it makes sense. Jesus is a big role, and it’s a big deal who fills it. There’s really no other way to put it: it takes someone special to play the part.
Which is why we’re awfully thankful for Jonathan Roumie.
A New York native, Jonathan graduated from The School of Visual Arts with a degree in filmmaking, before he moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting full-time. If you watched the first few episodes of The Chosen and had a nagging feeling you’d seen him in something before, chances are you had. Jonathan’s played roles in Chicago Med, The Mindy Project, The Good Wife, Law & Order, and the NCIS franchise. Maybe you even thought you’d heard him before. That’s because he does voiceover work, too—most notably, the Disney+ animated sequel Night at the Museum: Kamunrah Rises Again. And though both projects have come along since he started working with The Chosen, it’s certainly worth pointing out that he played a lead role in 2023’s Jesus Revolution—a movie about the spiritual awakening in Southern California in the 1970s that’s grossed over $50 million—and that he serves as a strategic advisor for the Hallow app, the largest and most popular prayer and meditation app in the world. Long story short: Jonathan’s done a lot of work. And there in the midst of it all, of course, is his ongoing portrayal of Jesus in The Chosen. And Jonathan’s been special, hasn’t he?
You’d be hard pressed to identify a role that’s harder to play than the role of Jesus. Would you want to attempt to as-perfectly-as-you-can play the man who lived perfectly? To wade into the waters of theological and interpretive debates that have been stirred for hundreds of years? And how about the range that’s required? But we’ve heard it again and again (and again) from viewers: “I can’t imagine anyone other than Jonathan Roumie playing Jesus.”
And we get it.
One of the great temptations in portraying Jesus—for an actor or a writer—is to present him as so otherworldly that it’s as if he’s been drained of blood and personality. All of us have a tendency to choose a side in the whole “fully-God/fully-man” mystery, and we tend to choose the “fully-God” side. Sometimes we’re the richer for it, but we’re always the poorer for it. Which is why it’s such a gift that while Jonathan certainly conveys power and authority in his performance as Jesus, he also lets us know Jesus as a person. There’s blood and personality. He sweats and he cries, and he laughs and he sighs. He holds someone who needs holding. He confronts what needs confronting. He blurts out funny noises to tease laughter from children. He dances at weddings with a goofy grin. He doesn’t let an awful word be the final word, because he knows the power of words. He even cracks jokes about ghosts. Jonathan brings all of this to his performance, because surely Jesus brought all of this to us when he walked the earth—and Jonathan’s performance has brought a whole lot of people face-to-face with the authentic Jesus.
So, thank you, Jonathan. We’re quite glad you’re the guy who plays Jesus in The Chosen.
