By Sandra Marroquin —
The Chosen has wowed audiences and won over critics, drawing people into the gospels who ordinarily wouldn’t go to church — and now they’re going to church.
That’s what Jonathan Roumie said on The View Dec. 1 based on the DMs he gets on Instagram.
“Every so often, I randomly go through DMs on Instagram, for instance, because that’s the platform I’m most active on and I just randomly will just pick – I pick two different people and both of these people that wrote to me, happened to have been lifelong atheists and never had any interest in God,” Roumie said.
“And somehow, somebody sent them the show and all of a sudden it’s like that first episode just kind of grabs hold of you. And if God wants to, He will find you. He will follow you. He will go after you.”
Coming out with Season 6 next year, The Chosen is a free online series of the life of Jesus with gripping fictional backstories of the disciples. Started in 2019, it defined a new genre, taking the cheesiness out of faith films.
The characterization, as well as the cinematography, has been convincing for viewers. Matthew is portrayed on the autism spectrum, a guy good with numbers but lacking people skills. Acted by Paras Patel, he is floored when Jesus treats him like a human being and invites him, “Follow me!”
“Through the process of the show, (viewers) became interested in the Bible and then they started going to the church and they had both converted to Christianity — lifelong atheists,” Roumie said. “To me, that’s remarkable.”
Season 6 is expected to cover the last 24 hours of Jesus’s life, culminating in the crucifixion.
Roumie confessed that it was challenging to him as actor to do justice to the crucifixion.
“I think as an actor, you’re always looking for truth in a character and to be able to find that and to play a character authentically you have to enter into whatever that character’s truth in the story is, and for Jesus, it becomes doubly intense,” he said. “I asked God to allow me some sense of what that would be like, and He didn’t disappoint. And it’s something that I’m still actively processing right now.”
Related content: House of David, Passion of Christ sequel is coming, Sarah’s Oil. Sources: EW Dispatch.
