If you\u2019re aiming to make a TV show about the life of Jesus, you better cast the right person for the lead role. Because no one\u2014no one\u2014has 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\u2019s reach through the church\u2019s witness outpaced the spread of the Roman Empire in ways no emperor could have ever imagined\u2014and the Empire itself has long been relegated to history\u2019s dustbin. Want to prop up someone from America? The country\u2019s 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\u2019d been at a rolling boil for thousands of years before he walked the earth.<\/p>\n
If Jesus laps everyone else with regard to history-making\u2014and he does\u2014you 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\u2019re keeping score at home, that list\u2019s 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\u2019s a big deal who fills it. There\u2019s really no other way to put it: it takes someone special to play the part.
\nWhich is why we\u2019re awfully thankful for Jonathan Roumie.<\/p>\n
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\u2019d seen him in something before, chances are you had. Jonathan\u2019s played roles in Chicago Med, The Mindy Project, The Good Wife, Law & Order, and the NCIS franchise. Maybe you even thought you\u2019d heard him before. That\u2019s because he does voiceover work, too\u2014most 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\u2019s certainly worth pointing out that he played a lead role in 2023\u2019s Jesus Revolution\u2014a movie about the spiritual awakening in Southern California in the 1970s that\u2019s grossed over $50 million\u2014and 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\u2019s 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\u2019s been special, hasn\u2019t he?
\nYou\u2019d be hard pressed to identify a role that\u2019s 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\u2019s required? But we\u2019ve heard it again and again (and again) from viewers: \u201cI can\u2019t imagine anyone other than Jonathan Roumie playing Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n
And we get it.<\/p>\n
One of the great temptations in portraying Jesus\u2014for an actor or a writer\u2014is to present him as so otherworldly that it\u2019s as if he\u2019s been drained of blood and personality. All of us have a tendency to choose a side in the whole \u201cfully-God\/fully-man\u201d mystery, and we tend to choose the \u201cfully-God\u201d side. Sometimes we\u2019re the richer for it, but we\u2019re always the poorer for it. Which is why it\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2014and Jonathan\u2019s performance has brought a whole lot of people face-to-face with the authentic Jesus.
\nSo, thank you, Jonathan. We\u2019re quite glad you\u2019re the guy who plays Jesus in The Chosen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you\u2019re aiming to make a TV show about the life of Jesus, you better cast the right person for the lead role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":2538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sin-categorizar"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n