Dallas Jenkins says he’s ‘walking through land mines every day’ as he creates ‘The Chosen’
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“I’m walking through land mines every day,” Dallas Jenkins, creator and director of “The Chosen,” told CBS correspondent Lee Cowan.
On “Sunday Morning,” CBS featured Jenkins and actor Jonathan Roumie in a special about the show. There, Jenkins opened up about what it’s like to tell the story of Jesus, and Roumie discussed how he feels portraying Jesus.
“The different ideas that people have in their head of who Jesus was is fascinating,” Jenkins told Cowan, adding that he isn’t “trying to avoid land mines” when telling the story. Jenkins’ goal is to take the characters “down from stained-glass windows.”
“We’re gonna take them down from stained-glass windows. We’re gonna take them down from statues,” Jenkins said to CBS News. “And we’re gonna remind ourselves that these people had the same questions, struggles and doubts that we have.”
Jenkins has previously said in an interview with the Deseret News that he tries “to remove the veil that we sometimes have and just say, this is what it would have looked like.”
“I believe that the authentic Jesus is first and foremost, of course, found in scripture,” Jenkins said, adding that there’s context to unravel. He said that while he appreciates the stained-glass depictions of Jesus, they can sometimes get in the way of who he is.
Roumie, who plays Jesus in the show, told CBS News about what it’s been like to play the role. “It’s humbling, man. I’m a dude that shows up and reads lines and says them to another person who’s saying lines that they memorized. I don’t know that I’ve met anybody that actually was disconnected enough to think that I’m actually Jesus.”
Previously, Roumie has described playing Jesus as “the honor of (his) life.”
“I love Jesus and it is the honor of my life to get to portray him,” he said to the Deseret News. “As long as God keeps bringing me stories that I can honor him with, to me, it doesn’t matter what genre they may or may not fall into. It just happens to be that at this stage, there is a lot for me to mine and relate to that are in sort of the faith-minded genre.”
Both Jenkins and Roumie completed filming of Season 4 earlier this summer. The filming took place in Midlothian, Texas, and Goshen, Utah.
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Season 4 will release in theaters on Feb. 1 and the show is expected to pick back up filming for Season 5 sometime in April.
In between seasons, Jenkins has been making his dream movie: “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.” Filming of the movie is taking place in Canada. Judy Greer and Pete Holmes have been announced as cast members.
“This is a dream come true and the movie I’ve most wanted to make my whole career. And I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone other than Lionsgate and Kingdom, who make great movies while supporting filmmakers,” Jenkins told Deadline.
As the cast and crew gear up for filming Season 5, Roumie has continued his partnership with Hallow, the prayer app. He and actor Liam Neeson narrated an Advent challenge reflecting on the writings of C.S. Lewis this Christmas season.
Roumie has also continued his nearly four-year sponsorship of the organization Unbound. The mission of the organization, per its website, is to partner “with families living in poverty on their path to become self-sufficient and fulfill their inherent potential.”
