‘for King + Country’ singer Joel Smallbone on God’s love, music and his new movie

When Joel Smallbone and his family came to America from Australia, the family had nothing but somehow everything.

“We had no insurance. We had no job. We had no way to provide. We had no furniture. We were sleeping on beds and out of clothes. We were very unsafe,” Smallbone, half of the Christian pop duo “for King & Country,” said. “But, inside our mom’s love, particularly, we felt very safe.”

Feeling God’s love through his mother changed Smallbone. And that’s part of the story he’s telling in his directorial debut film “Unsung Hero” — the biopic of the Grammy awarding for King & Country group compromised of Joel Smallbone and Luke Smallbone.

The duo is known for songs like “Together,” “God Only Knows” and “Little Drummer Boy.”

“Unsung Hero” is a forthcoming movie from Lionsgate. It’ll release on April 26. Smallbone, Candance Cameron Bure, Daisy Betts, Diesel La Torraca, Lucas Black are some of the main cast members.

It’s special for Smallbone because he’s portraying his dad.

“The most touching scene for me, without going into too much detail, was a reconciliation scene between my dad and my sister Rebecca,” Smallbone said in a phone interview. “And you’ve got to understand this is such a multiverse moment for me because I’m playing my dad, there’s an actor playing me.”

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But it wasn’t the only time Smallbone said there was a sweet moment on set.

The day after the last day of filming (they filmed in Kentucky), the actress Daisy Betts (who plays Smallbone’s mother) was scheduled to fly back to Australia. There was a winter cold front on the horizon and so on the last day of filming, they shot a playground scene — “a pivotal scene” — that Betts was involved in.

“The next morning, we woke up when we finished filming and there was three inches of snow on the ground,” Smallbone said. “And I just cried when I looked out the window because I was so overwhelmed that if we had been delayed one day, we couldn’t have finished.”

The heart of the film is about family. Smallbone said the movie’s release date is his parents’ 49th anniversary and it’s also right around Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. He’s dubbed the April 26 “Family Day.”

“It feels like we need to have Family Day,” he said. “The film is and that day is really a celebration of the power of family banding together in times of trouble. We’re all sons and daughters, many are parents, I hope in all the different shapes and sizes of family that folks take away the beauty of what it means to be part of a family. Be that a biological family or family by different definitions.”

When the Deseret News asked Smallbone why he does what he does whether that be making music or directing this movie, he said the film answers the question.

“Maybe you could say to whom much is given, much is required, but when we first moved to the states, so many families, so many people and even the American church really rallied around us,” Smallbone said. “And if it weren’t for those specific people and the local church, we wouldn’t be in the states anymore.”

Smallbone said he and Luke Smallbone see themselves as having the opportunity to “uplift people.”

“Maybe they see themselves differently or see God differently or see a loved one differently because of something that was sung or a show or in this case a movie,” he said.

It was important for him to create this movie because of the story it tells. “I would argue that Jesus Christ is the greatest storyteller that ever walked the earth,” Smallbone said. “The medium that he chose to communicate was through stories. And we’ve had the privilege of telling stories through music.” He added that telling a story through a movie felt like the next step because for King & Country” is “a very visual band.”

“This is the closest story to home, the most guttural, the most honest story that we could ever tell, being our own family story, and so it felt like the right step into the filmmaking world.”