Ep 168 | 'The Only Jesus Show My Kids Will Actually Watch' | Dallas Jenkins | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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Today's guest is the creator, the co-writer, the executive producer, and the director of The Chosen.

It's

I think it's the best TV show on there, online, on television.

It is by far the best story of Jesus Christ I've seen in my lifetime because it's so incredibly different and

you see the story in a way you've not seen before.

There is no shortage of hokey Jesus movies

that somehow find a way to be too preachy or botch the greatest story ever told.

Usually a PG version that completely skips over the violence that Christ endured or just the general living condition,

just the white robes.

I mean,

I do believe it was dusty at least.

If you're Mel Gibson, maybe you miss the opposite reason and you show the brutality of it all, but it also kind of misses the kindness.

The Chosen breaks both of these.

It has a chance to because it's

episodic, has two years going on its third season now.

It does something that no other depiction of Christ has ever done.

It shows him laughing and smiling, joking, dancing.

But what makes the chosen so impressive is that

it is a great piece of art in the same way that, you know, the sopranos,

the Godfather is a good piece of art.

Kind of the opposite of those, but it's beautiful.

It began with a short video on Facebook and then grew into the largest ever crowdfunding campaign for a media project.

It aired online for free using a pay-it-forward model.

An app for the chosen skyrocketed in popularity on both iOS and Android.

And around that time, I had today's guest on the podcast, just a few days, I think it was before Easter.

That Sunday, 750,000 people live-streamed the season two premiere.

From there, the chosen has grown exponentially.

From streaming on YouTube and Facebook to ranking fourth in shows searched on Roku, before long, it had half a billion episode views from all around the world.

It hasn't even been translated yet.

It got picked up by NBC's Peacock and Prime Video, and earlier this year, it was added to Netflix.

Season 3 debuted last month in over 2,000 theaters worldwide.

It had, I believe, 14

million

tuning in.

It will be dubbed into 100 languages, subtitled into 500.

And there are still four seasons to go.

This unparalleled growth is miraculous, and it comes at a time when intellectuals are pushing the narrative that Christianity is dead and atheism is our future.

As the Apostle Paul wrote, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.

The chosen is a much-needed reminder that Christ is alive and encouraging us to walk with him in the newness of life.

Today on the Glenbeck podcast, welcome Dallas Jenkins.

What a perfect message for today's podcast.

I want to talk to you about pre-born.

You know, in Luke chapter one,

it's not the Jesus' birth story.

It's actually the story of John the Baptist and his miracle birth.

He was the one that came before the Lord to till the ground and prepare the way.

If you

believe in and you believe the Bible

just continually repeats, it just shows us patterns to look for.

I think that means that the children that are being born now and

in these days may very possibly be the John the Baptist

preparing the way.

I think there's going to be lots of them.

That's why

it is so crucial

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All of these babies.

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Season three of The Chosen is out.

Here's the trailer.

You look troubled.

I am.

You're losing something.

I know what that's like.

What are you losing?

Time.

I say to you, love your enemies

and pray for those who persecute you.

Someone touched me.

If you are really the one who is to come, or should we look for someone else?

Go and tell John what you hear and see.

Who is it?

Where did we stop?

It's time.

I'm Judas of Keriot.

I have chosen you twelve as my apostles.

Don't feel any different?

I don't need you to feel anything to do great things.

What is stirring in your hearts

in the middle of such division and unrest

is Father God being revealed to you?

Come to me.

All who labor and are heavy laden,

and I will give you rest.

The scourge of false prophecy must

stop.

Jesus,

if you do not renounce your words,

we will have no choice but to follow the law of Moses.

I am the law of Moses.

They're here for Jesus of Nazareth.

More valuable than gold, more precious than rubies.

Force them out.

We are still in Rome.

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man

who built his house on the rock.

I'm the one who caused their hunger.

I should be the one to feed them.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

How are you, Dallas?

I'm good.

I'm glad to be here.

It's so good to have you.

You know, I was singing it before the interview.

I was singing about it yesterday, and I thought, I remember interviewing your father on left behind.

Yeah,

I don't think it's a stretch to say

in my lifetime,

because I wasn't born with Cecil B.

DeMille, but in my lifetime,

I believe

you and your father have

preached the gospel in a different way and hit more people probably than anybody else that I know.

You've done remarkable things.

You ever thought of that?

Your dad ever think about that?

Well, my dad right now is too busy finding new buttons for his shirt because

his shirts keep bursting.

He's very, very proud, obviously.

It's been fun to watch.

We occasionally sit there and go, what is happening?

How is this possible that this had happened?

It was 25 years ago that the first Left Behind books came out.

And that's, what was it, 60 million copies?

Yeah, 60, 70 million, something like that, yeah.

For whatever reason,

we don't know this side of heaven why, but God

seems to have chosen my dad and 25 years ago and now me to deliver the story of

Jesus to the world in a unique way that's, but that's still faithful to the intentions of the scriptures.

And

it's a, you know, it's something that I'm, I, I, I feel like I got a good front row seat on the bus to watch it happen, but I, because I don't think I'm responsible for it, I just get a chance to watch it happen.

It's pretty cool.

It is, it is just the best Jesus prediction, or I mean, a depiction I've ever seen.

It is a remarkable series and

the only Jesus thing that my children will actually sit down and watch with me.

It's so accessible.

The Jesus you picked to play Jesus

is

so

different than I think most Jesus.

He looks different.

He talks differently.

And why did you pick him?

It was about seven or eight years ago when the Chosen actually first had its birth pangs, which was part of a big church that I was part of in Chicago.

We had huge Good Friday services.

We would do

every Good Friday we'd have about seven or eight services, several thousand people apiece would come.

And I did a short film.

It was called The Two Thieves and it was about the crucifixion but from the perspective of the two thieves on the cross.

And I was casting the two thieves who were the main characters.

Jesus doesn't show up in the short film until the end when they're on the cross and they meet him.

And

so Jonathan Rumi, who now plays Jesus in the chosen, he auditioned for one of the thieves and did a great job, but there were two other guys who were really good.

And the people who were auditioning for Jesus were really bad.

And I'm like, I need a,

I said, you know, I know this is a supporting role in this short film, but he's got to be good.

We need a good Jesus.

And I said, that Jonathan guy seemed to be, you know, seemed to have a good tenderness about him that I think would be interesting.

So he auditions for Jesus for my little short film.

And 10 seconds into it, I saw what you see now.

Yeah, yeah.

Something, there's something special.

And I was like...

It's kindness.

Yes, but with masculinity.

It's not like a weak

kind of passive wallflower kindness that you sometimes see in Jesus' portrayals where he's so formal and

distant and soft.

So he's your best friend and a fierce lion at the same time.

Oh, yeah.

And as we say in Chronicles and Arni,

he's not a tame lion.

But all that to say,

we then, I shot this short film.

It was in a rock quarry in Illinois, almost as cold as it is in this studio right now.

And

there was about five minutes of screen time where he's on the cross.

And I'm just like, my goodness.

We got to do more of this.

So each year, each Good Friday, I would bring him back and we would do vignettes.

And it was always short films or vignettes, stories of Jesus, but from different perspectives, honoring the scriptures, but seeing it through different

lens.

And that's where we were kind of formulating, I think, some of we were finding it.

That was where we first, I did a Jesus joke.

There was a short film I did where Jesus is with the disciples and the disciples are arm wrestling.

And

Andrew defeats Thaddeus, which is a surprise to the disciples.

And one of the disciples says, I can't believe Andrew won.

And Jesus says, even I didn't see that coming.

And I saw

when we showed that short film in the church, the response to Jesus telling a joke and to being funny and even a joke about his own divinity.

The response was this response of like,

it was laughter, but it was almost like gratitude.

Like, oh.

And I had people coming up to me saying, thank you for showing Jesus as someone who would have have fun.

He was a man.

He was, yeah, he would have hanged with his disciples, that they would make a joke like that.

And that's when it was, again, like, there's something there.

And so, when it came time, the opportunity came to do the show, obviously, Jonathan was the first one that I cast.

His life has

had to have changed.

Oh, I mean,

it has to be a heavy mantle.

Just walking around,

people will see him and he's not Jesus but he is Jesus and

I can't imagine what his life is like he's he's wrestling with it

yeah he uh

he has a good

centered head on his shoulders he's a believer he knows that this is not I mean I think the thing that's most uncomfortable for him is the fact that he's not Jesus.

And yet

when he gets recognized,

the first thing people say is, Jesus, you know, Now, they know he's not Jesus too.

But there are some people for whom this portrayal in the show has changed their life.

I mean, I experience that.

When I get recognized in an airport or whatever, people don't treat me like a celebrity.

They come up and they start crying.

And they just want to say thank you.

And they'll say, my life has changed, or my relationship with my dad has changed, or my kids are for the first time.

you know,

considering Jesus because so now that's just me.

Think about it when they meet the guy who's playing him and sometimes they have a hard time separating him.

Yeah, I know.

And so

he gets it.

He knows the difference between him and Jesus, but he does wrestle with being recognized and being treated the way that he's treated sometimes.

I know Jim Caviesel quite well.

Have they talked?

They haven't.

They have a lot of

mutual friends, and eventually it's going to happen.

Jonathan has said eventually we'll meet.

The meeting of Jesus.

Yeah, and the world will collide.

There'll be some sort of cosmic disaster, perhaps, or it'll be awesome.

But either way.

I know that played heavy,

heavy on Jim for a long time.

Yeah.

But

I think there is a difference between us and the Passion of the Christ, too, in that I think there is in the chosen, because of the multi-season format and the time that we take,

I do think that Kvizel might have experienced even more of what Jonathan is experiencing because Passion of the Christ was so, I mean, it was, it was about, yeah, it was so big and epic,

and Jonathan's portrayal as we do it, there is a humanity there that makes him a little bit more accessible.

I think when people see Jim, sometimes there's almost a reverence, whereas with Jonathan's...

Because

it was just the last part,

you know.

And Mel's filmmaking style, again,

very dramatic.

It was beautiful.

Mine is a little bit more,

I don't know if raw is the right word, but I don't know.

Your filmmaking is absolutely stunningly beautiful.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

But I would say it's probably more because of

the smallness of it.

I'm not trying to do a big epic like Mel was.

For me, it's about the humanity, the small moments, the rawness of it.

So when people see Jonathan, there's almost an accessibility where they're like, they want to come up and hug him.

And that's been interesting.

The other thing that you did that I love,

and

I don't know if I've ever really seen it before, at least portrayed as well as you have done it.

The apostles are not apostles.

You know what I mean?

They're not the apostles that you expect.

There was a scene last season, it was towards the end, where Jesus is just non-stop healing.

And

you feel so bad for Jesus because he's there by himself, drained.

And they're having this normal conversation, not really paying attention, not really,

not doing what apostles would do, you would think,

and

even arguments back and forth.

They have no clue as to what they're dealing with.

Right.

Yeah.

Why that choice?

Yeah, so it's a great question.

So that was episode three of season two.

It's based on Matthew 4, 24, which it said Jesus was healing all kinds of people, just lines of people coming from Syria and

Damascus.

Yeah.

So instead of showing all the healings, I take you backstage.

And so

we spent time with the disciples, and it's still early in the ministry.

So they're wrestling with all of this.

So he's the Messiah?

Why haven't we overthrown the Romans yet?

What's that about?

Why did he choose me?

I'm not a student

like typical rabbinical students.

I was a fisherman.

And so they're wrestling with all of that.

Well, one thing leads to another, and they start arguing.

And in the midst of their argument, like where the argument reaches a height, because again, think about this.

Matthew was a tax collector.

Jews hated tax collectors.

They were betrayers of their faith.

That's a great depiction of him.

Yeah.

And even Jesus, when Jesus would speak of tax collectors, it wasn't positive.

And then you've got...

He's called as one of the followers, and now he's living with and spending time with these other disciples who would have hated him.

So they're arguing and arguing and arguing.

And in the midst of the argument, Jesus just walks by.

He's been healing for probably eight hours.

There's blood on him, pouring sweat.

Power is drained out of him.

He can barely stand up.

His mother helps him into bed.

Just beautiful.

Yeah.

Well, all he does is say good night.

And they're all just like, ugh,

like,

we suck.

And so that's the answer.

Why that choice?

I've been to Rome.

I've been to, I'm not a Catholic, but I've been to Catholic basilicas.

They're beautiful.

I've seen the stained glass windows.

I've seen the statues.

Like Michelangelo.

Right.

There's something to the reverence.

But for me, it's like,

yeah, I don't,

they were human beings.

They were guys.

They screwed up.

They were just like us.

And I feel like seeing Jesus through the eyes of those who actually met him and who had the same questions and doubts and struggles that we do today,

I want to communicate that the answer and the solution to those questions and struggles is the same today as it was 2,000 years ago.

But if I don't show you the questions and the struggles and the humanity, then there's not much for you to connect with.

And so then the answer isn't as connectable either.

So what I hear from viewers is they go, that's me.

Simon is me.

Matthew is me.

And because of that, then when Jesus heals their wounds, it's like, well, maybe he can heal mine too.

Yeah.

And

it's interesting because you look at,

you know, you talk about going to the Vatican, seeing the stained glass windows and everything else, and the majesty of that.

People, I'll say

at times,

Jesus is my best friend.

He is my best friend.

And I just talk to him.

You know what I mean?

And I've had people look at me and go,

he is

the Lord of lords, king of kings.

And I'm like, yeah, I know.

And that has set me that there are two ways that we have to appreciate it.

We must worship him

as

a king on a throne and humble ourselves.

But there is also

the kindness that he has, you know?

The thing that some people were skeptical of when the show first came out

was,

well, if you humanize him too much,

like episode three of season one, where you see him making camp and dressing his own wound and making his own food and trying to start a fire and

doing his bedtime prayer.

There are some people who are like, well, the risk is you're taking away from his divinity.

But he wouldn't have gone poof to start the fire.

Exactly.

And I believe,

and I can say this pretty confidently because it's what we've heard from millions of people, is that it not only doesn't detract from his humanity, if anything, it enhances it.

It makes it even more impressive.

It makes him more humble.

Because you go, the creator of the universe is doing this.

He became one of us.

Yes.

He didn't sin, but he knows what we felt.

He did what we did.

We even portray him as like that he was a clumsy teenager.

He didn't sin, but he was a human being.

Now, the whole God-man

conundrum has vexed us for 2,000 years.

We will never understand it, but we do know he laughed and danced at weddings with his friends.

The first miracle he ever did was a favor for his friends because his mom asked him to.

The term Emmanuel means God with us.

It's typically a Christmas term.

That's typically right around this time of year.

We're talking about Emmanuel.

It's not just a Christmas term.

It means God with us.

Why?

Why did he dress his own wounds and make his own food?

Because God was with us.

That is an extraordinary concept.

And I think

when that hits you and you go, that's the creator of the universe,

and he hung out with his disciples and was a human being, I think it makes it even more humbling.

Oh, I agree.

And then, of course, as you know, it's even more of an example.

It's more of a, that's, he's.

It's the first being last.

Yes.

I mean, that is.

You've always heard, well, General Patton ate after all of his troops.

Yeah.

Jesus

served us.

I mean, that's crazy humbling.

Crazy humbling.

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I want to play a clip,

and this is an exchange between Jesus and Little James.

Watch,

Master,

Little James.

May I have a moment?

Of course.

I am

not always confident to speak.

Slow to speak, it's a very good quality.

I wanted to ask you a question, please.

You're sending us out with the ability to heal the sick and lame.

Yes, that is what you said.

Yes, so you're telling me that I have the ability to heal.

forgive me, I just

find that difficult to imagine with my condition

which you haven't healed.

Do you want to be healed?

Yes,

of course, if that's possible.

I think you've seen enough to know it's possible.

Then why haven't you?

So the actor who plays Little James

has

cerebral palsy and scoliosis

in real life.

So when I cast him, I knew I was eventually going to have to do this scene,

which is

one of the toughest questions that believers and non-believers have ever faced, which is why does he heal some and not others?

Why does a good God allow suffering?

So finally, in season three, I was like, I can't wait any longer because there's a scene,

a scene, I shouldn't call it a scene, a passage in the Gospels where Jesus sends out the disciples two by two and they heal and they cast out demons and they preach the word.

It's a temporary moment during the ministry where he grants them this authority.

And I just thought, what would little little James think of that if he's going to be asked to heal others and yet he still has this malady?

And so

that

question is one that I guess I had

the craziness to try to

answer.

It was beautiful.

What is it like on the set?

Because there has to be moments like that that it feels personal.

Yeah.

What is that like?

I would say

that there's been about a dozen times where

the character of jesus in the show is

one of two things either asking someone to follow him

or

a character is quoting scripture like actually because a lot of the content from i mean that scene that you just watched isn't directly from scripture obviously but every now and then there is they're actually saying words that were uttered in scripture.

And almost without exception, when one of those two things happens, Jesus calling someone to follow him or they're quoting scripture, something happens, something emotional.

I've had actors come up to me and say, I don't know what happened there.

I just couldn't stop crying or I couldn't, they have to walk away and kind of gather themselves.

It happens enough times that it's no longer a surprise.

And

I think it just speaks to

the power of scripture, but also I think that even though we know these are actors and

this is

a portrayal,

Whether you believe or not,

wherever you are in your relationship with Jesus, whether you have one or don't, or whether you're in the middle of one or searching or not,

when you're faced with that choice, it is an emotional experience, dramatic.

Whatever choice you make, even if you reject, even if you don't believe, even if you dismiss, you can't ignore it.

And I feel like that's sometimes what happens on the set.

And it's,

again, it's a very humbling thing because because you go, gosh, we are not, this is not just a normal show where I can just do this and walk away from it and hope it turns out well.

We're portraying something that we believe actually happened and

literally changed the world and continues to today.

Everybody a believer on set?

Oh,

the majority aren't, I would say.

Aren't.

Yeah, correct.

But so over half our actors are not.

They're not believers.

Yeah.

Or, I mean,

it's a spectrum, you know, but

and a couple have become so since doing the show.

But yeah, a lot of them

either

an agnostic faith background, but just love the show,

love the historical portrayal

and find the stories very intriguing.

And

some believe that some of this very well may have happened, maybe not necessarily ready to

acknowledge Jesus as God.

But

I would say it's a majority of our cast and crew.

Back with Dallas here in a second.

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You know, the thing about your portrayal here is that,

and, you know, this is the way the Bible is.

It just feels like today.

Yeah.

And I find it interesting.

I assume you believe we're living in end of days, and the possibility at least exists that we'll see Christ.

It's interesting to me that your father laid the groundwork and that felt right at the time.

But now,

if we are indeed approaching these days,

it's not the fear,

it's the strength and the

empathy and the kindness of Christ.

And

I wouldn't have thought that.

You know?

Yeah,

that's a really insightful point and question.

Yeah, 25 years ago,

it was almost like the Left Behind books where

I don't know if a warning is the right answer, but it's kind of like, hey,

this is what the Bible is predicting, and we're starting to see some evidences of it.

Pay attention.

Not last call, but a call.

Yeah.

And now

there's so much of what was predicted happening.

I mean, the division alone.

I mean, like, I mean, you've,

you know this better than anybody.

I mean, there's never been a time, perhaps in history, where literally just

even potentially agreeing with someone who might be on the team, on the other team, on anything is a

verboten, and you shouldn't do it.

And if you do it, now you're no longer on your team.

I mean, it is insane.

And the world is seeming to explode.

Well, you don't really need to give a warning anymore that the world might explode.

It's exploding.

The question then has become is, well, how now shall we live?

What is our responsibility in the midst of this?

And you might think, well,

we need to fight.

We need to overthrow.

And that's what the Jews were saying at the time.

Jesus came, all right, finally, you're here.

The world's exploding.

Do your thing.

Heal us.

Take over.

And he went, oh, yeah, no, I'm not here to stop that.

I'm here for your heart.

I'm here for the kingdom in your heart.

I'm building a new kingdom, and it's not what you think.

And

they didn't get it until his death and resurrection.

I've been saying for the last

probably

year,

maybe eight months, really clearly

there's coming a time, right now, it's right now,

where if you're not, if you haven't had a relationship with the Holy Spirit, I don't know if you're going to survive because you have to be guided by

him and

that we have to be more Christ-like.

And it's amazing to me from Christians, they will say,

what are we going to do about everything?

And I'll say,

read your scriptures and just

live like Jesus wants you to live.

And

they'll say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that, but what are we going to do?

And it's almost exactly the same thing.

We don't understand

who we are.

I don't know.

We know it's not going to continue this way.

And yet we're trying to,

I don't know how to express it.

We're trying to live our way when that massive change is coming, where we won't live like this at all.

Yeah, I think, I think, well, I think we have, even those of us who believe struggle with wanting to control.

We want to impact the circumstances around us.

And Jesus called us to do that, but not in the way we expect.

And I think for you especially, I would imagine a lot of your viewers and listeners are going, Glenn, you're a warrior.

You've been fighting for us for so long.

Fight.

You're like, yeah, but

it's a different kind of fighting.

Yeah, Jesus was a warrior.

I mean, if that wasn't war that he went through, I don't know what is.

And it's just, it's just not the way you think.

You know, I've found that

I've been approached on the street many times

with people who just lose their mind and just like come at me and

I have found a way to, through God, to actually love them and to

feel

the hurt that somehow or another I have made them feel.

And

I've just said to them I love you

and you keep repeating that and

it

it they don't nobody knows how to fight that because I'm not giving you

any oxygen for the fire

you know yeah and and that's I mean he talked about the last time he first he talked about

a kind word can is almost like keeping hot coals of fire on someone's head.

I mean, the kind of fight that he did was just so different than

how we see it.

And

I think the question that we have to ask ourselves is, okay, so what does victory look like?

And I think we think victory looks like overthrowing the government, overthrowing our oppressors,

changing the society so that we are now in control.

And, you know, again, we're both libertarians.

We know the danger paths.

But

Jesus

flipped on his head, on its head, what victory looked like.

And

the victory is, and that's even the clip that we just played where little James is saying, well, why haven't you healed me?

And Jesus says to him, yeah, it would be a good story for me to do a miracle.

But there's lots of people who have that story.

The greater miracle is you proclaiming me in spite of your weakness, you finding joy in the midst of your circumstances.

That's where Christians can truly impact society is to go, yeah, we get it.

We're suffering too, we know.

And

some of the most joyous people we've met have been in third world countries who are living in dastardly circumstances, living in oppression and going, yeah, but I still have the joy.

That's the victory.

That's the battle to win.

I was in Iraq

one night.

This church was...

The church in Iraq is awesome.

Awesome.

They were scheduled to be bombed, to be bombed and killed at 7 p.m.

And I'm asking my guys,

are they still going?

And he's like, yep, they're going to be there.

So I went, but I was like,

moved.

I was like, what about

these guys, these families, the children, the dads, the mothers,

full of joy.

And they were like, if it happens, it happens.

What a great way to live your life.

They'll talk about it.

They'll say, we had a wonderful bombing last week.

And they're like, what were you talking about?

And they're like, oh,

we're closer to God than ever before.

Yeah.

I mean, because

they find God in the midst of challenge, and that's what true joy is versus happiness, which comes and goes.

And yeah,

we do that a lot in the show too, of trying to show that

it's actually through

the trial,

the pain, that you actually feel closest to God.

It's a hard truth to grasp.

It takes a long time.

But that's, again,

that's the victory that comes when you can actually get there.

It becomes a superpower.

There's

a part in this season where Jesus says, You think it's hard to follow me now?

You haven't seen anything yet.

And that was one of those moments where I feel like,

wow,

that's today.

Can you talk about

a little bit about

how what people What you hope people get from watching this,

and not just from Jesus, but from the apostles on

you think it's tough,

you're going to be crucified upside down.

Yeah, well, so there's a

scene that you're referencing is in episode two of season three, where it's the scene where he officially calls him.

He officially says, you're my apostle.

So we sometimes get those terms mixed up.

Disciples, Jesus had many disciples, hundreds that followed him around, but the apostles were the 12 that he said, you're my leaders.

You're going to go out and say, apostles means the one who's sent.

And so he gathers them all in Simon's house and says, you're right, you're my guys.

You're the official 12, and you're my apostles.

And they're like, whoa, you're sending us?

He says, yes.

So he starts telling them, you're going to go out.

You're going to preach.

You're going to heal.

You're going to cast out demons.

But you're actually not going to take any money.

You're not going to take anything to wear.

You're going to go out there without me.

And they're like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

We've been with you and we've seen you when you do these things.

And you get attacked, you get threatened by our leaders.

You're sending us out there without you.

How are we going to do this?

And he's like, well, you need to learn to not fear those who may kill the body, destroy the body, but

it's more about the soul.

And John, the apostle says, so you're saying we could die?

And there's this moment where Jesus has in the show has this, like he, and Jonathan, the actor, and I talked about this.

He's like, I see the future, but I can't communicate it to them just yet.

They need to have it kind of delivered in small pieces.

So you see his face change and he's

very sad, but he says, there will come a time when you face the kind of persecution that I'm facing.

And then you will know what it truly means to give up your life.

But that's not on this trip.

On this trip,

it'll feel different.

And we've heard from so many people who've seen that scene who felt personally convicted about their own, like they're like, well, he's called me to be sent and for me to sacrifice and me to be willing to give up my life if necessary.

And that's the most affirming thing I can ever hear about the show is when people say, oh, that scene was for me as much as it was for them.

That takes the apostles off of stained glass windows.

That takes them down from the statues where they're standing there regally and makes them, you go, oh,

I'm that, I'm him, I'm her.

And that's that's that's my that's the favorite thing that I ever hear from from viewers is when there's a connection to that.

And it's it's not,

you know, in Sunday school, growing up, you know, you sometimes see Jesus portrayed on a flanograph, and he's wearing the white robe and he's smiling.

And he's perfectly white.

Yes, exactly.

He didn't live in the first century.

He's got to have some cologne on of some sort as well.

And it's clearly being laundered every

couple hours out in the desert.

But

the chosen,

the theme of season three is, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

We don't skip over the weary and heavy-laden part.

And season three is a tough season because we portray the kinds of things that we face today that we know they face then, and Jesus doesn't erase it all.

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I think this is like perfect timing, at least for me,

where I am

in my view of things.

But what

must be strange

for you, you know, when Lucille Ball had her baby,

first time anybody was pregnant, first time baby was going to, you know, be born,

70%

of every television, every person that had a television, 70% of them were watching that night.

I knew what it was like at Fox.

It was not, you know, it was 3 million a night.

There's something about that because you can feel it.

This is spilling out into people's lives all the time.

Yeah.

How does, how do you,

how do you react to that?

How is what?

Because this feels right this year to me.

But it might hit somebody four years down the road.

Oh, sure.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So when we launch each of our episodes right now, season three coming out each Sunday night, you know, Sunday night, 7 o'clock Eastern, we have a big live stream on YouTube, Facebook, and the Chosen app, and it's all at once.

And we get, you know, a couple hundred thousand people show up for that.

But 99% of our viewers are watching this over the course of multiple years.

And there's still plenty of people who I'll I'll run into who go, hey, you know, you're Dallas Champions, the creator of the chosen.

Yeah, yeah.

And they're like, I just started season one.

Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, season one.

That was like, I've made that four years ago.

It came out a year and a half ago.

Season one just debuted on Netflix a couple of weeks ago, and it's going really well on Netflix.

And so, I mean, and it's translated into 25 languages on Netflix.

So there's people all over the world discovering it.

And

that's the weird thing about it is they're talking about how I was so moved by,

and I'm assuming they're going to mention something that I just did, and they're like, when Jesus redeems Mary in a bar, and I'm like, oh, that's episode one, season one.

Oh, yeah, that's right, okay.

I got to refresh my memory.

But yeah, this is a living, breathing, constantly changing.

It's almost.

Movies changed when the videotape.

you know, came out

and they could have that extra life.

Television's always been television.

And, you know, when the DVD came out, I guess, you know, some shows.

But

now this is almost like music.

It is

a good point.

It just lives at any time, anywhere in the world, and will continue to affect for decades.

Well, and right now we're only reaching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the show expanding around the world because,

you know, we just established a new partnership with a nonprofit that's going to be raising, it already has hundreds of millions of dollars to translate it into hundreds of languages.

And so what's happening in the States with the chosen is starting to happen in, I mean, it's starting to really blow up in Brazil, the Philippines,

India, there's places where it's starting to grow.

We're trying to catch up with it.

I mean, it's growing bigger than we can keep up with.

And they're going, and to your point, they're going, we just saw season one, which

we had translated, you know, a couple of years ago.

They're like, all right, season two, translation.

And I'm going, hey, the translation takes longer to do than it does to watch.

Like, this is hard.

And there's hundreds of languages, but it's growing.

And the demand for it is growing so big, we're trying to keep up with it.

We're establishing an international team and trying to get it out there.

But the other thing that's interesting, to your point, is, and this is also like music.

How many times have you heard the same song that you love or that has spoken to you?

Over and over.

And sometimes, being a father now, a song has huge meaning compared to what it did when you were a teenager.

And so we have people who say,

people who will say to me, I watch the scene of Jesus and Mary, or I watch the scene of

Jesus healing the paralytic or Jesus calling Matthew

once a month because it, or I just watched it again for the 50th time because

it comforts me or brings me so much,

like

they need to see it again to remind them of who Jesus is.

And

that's really cool, too,

when unlike television back then, when Lucy Ball had her baby, you watched it.

You didn't get a chance to see it again unless it was maybe in a rerun during the summer.

And then that was it.

So that's,

I think this show is uniquely positioned for such a time as this because it can

heal people repeatedly.

And yes, and build.

And even because the seasons, this is the third time we've watched The Chosen start to wherever you are.

Because the seasons take a while, and then when you have the new season, we're back watching it from the beginning.

The portrayal of

the women

on the path.

And thank you for your portrayal of Mary Magdalene.

I think she gets slighted

a lot.

And

I think she was most likely a really, truly remarkable woman, as you portray.

And the actress who plays her, Elizabeth, is a miracle.

Yeah.

You've shown it, I think,

once.

I'm trying to remember

the woman who is traveling.

Her father was like,

wait, you're going to go out on the road.

I can't remember.

Yeah, Rhema is the name of

the character.

She's not from scripture, but she's

matched with Thomas,

the apostle.

And

so they're traveling.

That did not happen.

I mean, it happened in the scriptures.

But back then, that was

unheard of, right?

Yeah.

So women back then were

property may be too strong of a word,

but

their fathers controlled their lives, including who they married.

And

so

then when they were married, then

they belonged to their husbands

in a sense.

But when you read the Gospels, there's some things that you can pick up on that are pretty surprising.

One is there were women who followed Jesus, traveled with him, and actually supported the ministry.

Right.

Because the disciples, they gave up their jobs to become official rabbinical students.

That's what would happen when you would follow a rabbi.

You'd give up everything and you'd follow the rabbi.

Well, a woman wouldn't be an official rabbinical student, but she still followed Jesus, wanted to be around the ministry, wanted to be around the sermons.

So they had the jobs.

So

when people talk about our portrayal of women in the show,

and they talk about how we honor them and give them strength, and I'm like, yeah, but

that's not as against type as you might have expected.

Now, to your question, Rhema, who plays,

who's the daughter of a man named Cafni, who was at the, in our portrayal,

the wedding at Cana.

This is episode five of season one is when we meet her.

She and Thomas are are the caterers, the wine providers for the wedding, and they see this miracle.

And so they want to follow Jesus.

Well, the father of Rhema has to give permission.

She can't just leave the house and go off.

A, it wouldn't be safe, but B,

even in Jewish law, like she would have been living outside of the authority of her father.

So

it's been a really cool way for us to explore some of that by showing just how big of a deal that would have been.

And so, yeah, her character,

her father, especially who's not a believer, who finds even Jesus to potentially be blasphemous.

But we portray it as though Jesus did a miracle that saved his business.

And so he's kind of like, all right, I feel like my daughter really wants to follow you.

I'm going to allow this.

Thomas,

you better keep her safe.

Jesus, you better take care of her.

So we portray some of those kind of family dynamics.

And the Gospels talk about that.

They say, I will cause division in your household.

There may be even hatred within your family because following me actually takes precedence.

What's the process like when you go

off script?

When you go off of scripture

and you're trying to tell something and you're writing scenes that

are out of your head.

What is the pressure and the process like to write that?

Yeah, for sure.

It's a tightrope, and I don't always have the balance on it that I'm trying to find.

So

the one word that is the banner above all that we write is plausible.

Now, that applies biblically, spiritually, historically, culturally, and artistically, which is

This isn't a traditional Bible show in the sense that we're not just reenacting verse by verse, miracle by miracle, which has been done before and done well.

And

this isn't trying to replace that.

This is a show about the people of first century Galilee.

It's a historical drama, using the Bible as the primary source of truth and inspiration.

So

when I go off script, which is actually the majority of the time, I mean, in the Bible, Jesus never said hello.

You know, I mean, he never says Jesus, you know,

said good night.

Yeah, exactly.

Or was eating a piece of bread while he was talking to his friends.

So it's dangerous territory

we're walking through and waters to wade in.

We operate from, is this plausible?

Now, the answer to that question is a tough one sometimes.

But does this fit within the character and intentions of Jesus in the Gospels?

And

I have Bible

consultants that I work with who read all our scripts.

They don't have veto power because they're not.

And they're different religions.

Yeah, so I have a Catholic priest, a Messianic Jewish rabbi, and an evangelical scholar.

I'm an evangelical, so I'm going to obviously see things through that perspective.

And I'm the final say.

I mean, even if I disagree with one of them, we have another process where if there's disagreement, we kind of take it to a few more people.

And

we only go farther than that if there's what we would call a red flag, meaning if especially my

Messianic Jewish rabbi who really has a great handle on the history of it, if he says this would never happen, like red flag,

then I'm going to take that very seriously.

That's not going to be something I go, well, we disagree.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, but that's very rare.

I mean, it's happened maybe once or twice.

Has there been something that you all really agonized over that did make it in?

Yeah.

So in season one,

we introduce you to Simon as someone who is fishing on Shabbat.

He's breaking Jewish law to

feed his family, to pay his taxes, all that stuff.

And Rabbi Jason Sobel, who's our consultant, said it wouldn't happen.

Jews do not break the Sabbath.

And I said, okay, well, what if we portray it as a huge deal?

Like, what if we like, because the exceptions in the case of breaking Sabbath law were when your life is at stake.

And I can't even pronounce the term, but it's

Pekoknefesh or something.

I'm butchering it, so forgive me, my Jewish brothers and sisters.

But which is, if your life is at stake, then

you can break a Sabbath rule.

So what if we portray it as Simon really believes his life is at stake here?

He might be wrong, but he's doing it.

So Rabbi Jason kind of reluctantly tolerated that.

And so because we portrayed it as a big deal.

There are people.

Yes.

There are good people, religious people who are not die-hard religious people who would go, that, yeah, my life is at stake.

And it's a little...

It's a little snakey, but it's also

even think Simon, I would have considered him a die-hard religious person, but I would also say he was a die-hard everything.

I I mean, Simon Peter, he

did everything like a bull in a china shop.

And so to me, it was plausible that he could go, I am a practicing Jew, but right now I have no, my life is at stake because if I don't, if I don't pay these taxes, if I'm not able to survive, and so it's a, it's a, you know, the plot of it you can see in season one.

But that was the kind of thing that we, that we wrestled with.

There's another moment in season two

that was

season two, episode five, is is probably the most controversial episode we've done.

It has a few moments that were controversial for people.

One is Mary Magdalene relapses.

She's someone who'd been redeemed by Jesus, walking the straight and narrow path, healed from

her alcoholism and their demon possession, and she gets triggered by a few things and has a relapse.

And in that same episode, Jesus has a couple of conversations with John the Baptist, and they have some arguments.

They like are two cousins.

They have some teasing each other.

They have some arguments.

I love that.

Yeah, see, and so did my Messianic Jewish rabbi, who was like, because some people were really upset with that.

Mostly evangelicals were like,

if you have two rabbis, you've got three opinions.

That's conservatives.

But all my Jewish friends who were like, because it was mostly evangelicals who were like, John the Baptist had a huge respect for Jesus, which is, of course, true.

But

they have not been around enough Jews.

Yes.

That's going to argue, and it doesn't, they're not mad.

They're just

how they're learning.

That's how they learn.

And so Jesus

is saying to John the Baptist certain things, and John's like, wait a minute, well, why don't you do this?

And Jesus has an answer, you know, and that's how John is learning.

So that scene was controversial for some people, but then the big one,

10 seconds that kind of broke the internet when it happened, is Jesus preparing for a sermon.

the big sermon on the mount.

And he's by himself, and he's kind of working through the words that he's going to say.

I loved that.

And he's like, salt has lost its flavor.

No, no.

He's kind of working through it.

And there were some people who lost their minds, just were like, he's God.

He never struggled with anything.

And I'm like, well, this isn't sin.

This is Jesus genuinely thinking, I'm going to be speaking to thousands of people.

I'm God.

I want to say things in a way that they're going to...

He's also man.

And he's also mad.

I don't think, I mean, this idea that Jesus is born all-knowing,

I don't, there would be no struggle then well the scripture says he grew in wisdom and stature which means that we're still at the kind of the beginning of his ministry at that point and he is still trying to yeah I thought it was great yeah and well and many people did in fact the majority of people thought it was beautiful but there are some people who have a very

what I would consider to be a rigid view of Jesus now to be clear I don't know for a fact that Jesus

struggled with the words to try to figure out what he was going to say it's not fact

the whole hypostatic union, God, man, fully God, fully man, has vexed people for 2,000 years.

It's not going to be solved from a comment on YouTube.

But there were plenty of people who thought they could solve it with their YouTube comment.

And I'm not trying to solve it either.

I'm saying I think this is plausible.

I think it's actually really beautiful.

And, you know, season

episode three of season three,

which you haven't seen yet, but I can't wait for you to see it because I think you're going to absolutely love it.

We show Jesus going to his hometown of Nazareth.

And it's a famous gospel story where he preaches in the synagogue and he asserts that he's the Savior.

And it

doesn't go well.

It doesn't go well.

Suboptimal.

Well said.

And that's actually the moment in the trailer where the man says,

the Pharisee says,

If you do not renounce your words, we have no choice but to follow the book of Moses, which is where Moses said, you kill false prophets.

And Jesus says, I am the law of Moses.

Well, in that episode, we see him going to his childhood home.

He goes to his mom's house.

She's got food for him.

He stays in his childhood room.

The next morning, they go to the festival, Rosh Hashanah, where they're all celebrating.

It's a carnival.

He plays a game with his childhood friends.

He's lousy at it.

He was never good at sports.

Some of those things

when you think about like,

how much could Jesus bench press?

You know, was he good at sports?

Right.

And I think sometimes we think, well, of course, he's perfect.

He's God.

He could do anything.

He's not Superman.

He's not Superman.

He grew up in wisdom and stature.

We also show a flashback of Jesus as a six-year-old.

And his father Joseph is teaching him some of his carpentry.

And while that's happening, Jesus is learning to read.

And there's this moment where Jesus, six-year-old Jesus, is like reading some scripture and he's sounding out the words and Joseph is saying, no, sound it out.

And he's like, brokeen, he's like, broken, broken, hearted, hearted.

You know, broken, what's that word?

What is brokenhearted?

And Jesus says, what is that?

What is brokenhearted?

And Joseph is saying, oh, it's a heart that's broken.

And it's not the heart in your chest.

And

portraying that and exploring that, to me, I fell more in love with Jesus just even in the writing of that scene because I'm like, did he, was he born knowing how to read?

Yeah.

Of course not.

Was he born knowing how to walk?

Of course not.

That's the beautiful thing about the story.

And so I do think that we sometimes don't, I think we sometimes miss out on that.

And so that to me was the

figuring out what he wants to say to me was part of this whole beautiful story of God becoming man attention all small biz owners at the UPS store you can count on us to handle your packages with care with our certified packing experts your packages are properly packed and protected

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I don't know if you know I'm a painter.

And

this

year I'm going to paint a painting of Judas, which I never

thought, you know.

But it's really because of the chosen that I...

Because

he is always

he's always

He's hated.

He turned Christ in.

Turned Christ in.

But also if it wasn't for him, you know, it was a job that had to be done.

And I

the fact that he hung himself,

he knew.

He knew.

And if Christ, if he would have, if he wouldn't have hung himself, Christ would have forgiven him if he was.

Sorry, you know.

How are you going to portray,

are you looking at him as more of a Josephus kind of character from history?

There's a lot of false messiahs out there.

I mean, the hills were full of people saying they were the Messiah.

People don't realize that.

Jesus was just one of many at his day.

And they were all warriors.

All of them.

They were all expecting warriors.

And you see it in the second sea, or yeah, second season where they're like, but why aren't we like, why aren't we going to build an army?

Right.

You know?

So it would be logical that he would say he's not the Messiah.

Right.

How are you going to play him?

Well, I can't give all of that away, but you're seeing the hints now.

So in season three,

Judas

is now following Jesus, goes home to kind of settle his affairs and talks to his sister.

And his sister says exactly what we just talked about.

She's like, you're following this Messiah.

The Romans don't like

messiahs.

The Jews don't like false messiahs.

They kill people

who are false prophets.

And Judas says,

which is a line that people have said just broke their hearts.

He says, if he's the Messiah, he won't be killed.

I mean, think about the ramifications of that, of Judas saying that.

He really believed, though.

I think it's unarguable that Judas joined the team believing

and healed sick like the other disciples, cast out demons like the other apostles.

We show that actually in episode four of season three, which is coming soon.

The scenes that we're portraying of Judas now

are, I'm hearing from people, are heartbreaking.

When he meets Jesus in episode one, Jesus says, so your name, the the meaning of your name, Judas, Judas actually means praising God with your hands.

And Jesus says, yes.

Judas says, yeah, praise God.

And Jesus says, with your hands.

And Jesus says, so will you praise God?

He says, yes, with my whole heart, you know.

So

absolutely, Judas believed that he was the Messiah, at least initially.

Without giving much away, I do believe that ultimately Judas was

saying,

all right,

I'll say this delicately, poop or get off the pot.

Like, if you're the Messiah, do your thing.

And if you're not the Messiah, then we need to know now because

otherwise we're doing a lot of damage.

Because a lot of people, more than normal, more than normal messiahs that have come along, are following you.

And Judas saw miracles.

So

when did he actually stop believing Jesus was the Messiah?

And

are you going to show, so what I want to paint is the moment after,

where he knows that

what he's done.

Are you going to spend time in that period?

Of course.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, that's the thing that what we're setting up now.

with Judas and introducing you to Judas, I think, is what's going to make seasons six and seven that much more painful.

And people are already saying that now, as they're saying,

the first couple of seasons are like, I can't, when I start to think about what's coming, it's even worse than normal for me because I now feel like I know the disciples.

I know his mother.

I know, I've seen Jesus laugh and dance.

Oh my goodness, I don't want to see him on the cross, you know?

And that's what they experienced.

And that's why it's going to be painful.

I'm not going to shy away from it, obviously.

But the Judas stuff is especially painful.

We wouldn't be the chosen if we didn't,

if we skipped over it and just tried to and then Judas betrayed him and then he hung himself right no it's it's usually what you get yeah it demands demand demands some time um because I think we need to feel the weight of it and I think we also need to feel um our own our own culpability in it as as flawed sinful human beings of who he was dying for

you

if you believe troubled times are coming I pray I'm not a Judas you know or a Simon Peter who

denied him who denied him

I mean, think when you portray that, it's going to hit home to people, I think.

For people who, who, for, for, for guys who saw his miracles, ate with him, yeah, drank with him, went to weddings with him, knew, saw his miracles, and still, when a couple of them, when faced with

the threat, go went, uh,

now, what's what's interesting is once he rose, spoiler alert,

season seven.

Wait, wait, why?

Yeah, sorry.

Uh, when he, when he resurrected, they all were like,

never again.

I mean,

that's one of the greatest evidences for it, is how passionately they were like, we saw him rise from the dead.

He conquered death.

We don't care if we die.

Right.

Are you taking this beyond his resurrection?

Will you go into Paul and

right now?

I'm trying to just get season four written.

And at the end of season seven, I'm going to take a year-long nap.

But

season seven will go past his resurrection, yes, but it's not going to go into the whole, all the book of Acts where all the disciples are.

That'll be another show or a series of movies.

We're talking about that now, but I'm trying not to get the cart before the horse.

It's really, really hard to do a TV show and to have it be good.

And so I got plenty to work on now.

But yeah,

I think if God calls me to be telling Bible stories the rest of my life, I could do a lot worse.

So we'd love to tell those stories.

The Apostle Paul,

obviously one of the greatest stories in the history of humanity,

potentially just second only to Jesus in terms of the impact he had on the world.

He wrote the majority of the New Testament.

And if you want to talk about a great

conversion story, a drama, I mean, there's no better drama than death to life, than blindness to sight, than killing to being killed for the same cause.

It's something.

So I'd love to tell that story,

but I got what I've got to figure figure this out first.

Thank you for what you've done with Nicodemus, too.

Yeah.

I love that character.

Yeah.

And kind of

quickly mentioned in the Bible, but you've really made him

real.

Yeah.

What a great actor, too.

Eric Barrow, who plays him.

And that season one, he's just, he's astonishing.

But yeah, I think it is also one of the reasons we chose him as a main character was

kind of the double agent that Nicodemus clearly was in Scripture.

And this goes to an important point.

You mentioned he's briefly mentioned in Scripture.

If you want to know like, how does the chosen get made?

You can look at Nicodemus.

Because we look at what's mentioned in Scripture and then we work our way backwards and we build around that.

So we see him first meeting Jesus in secret.

asking him all these questions, clearly believing that Jesus is the son of God, but not knowing what to do with it, not fully understanding it, but saying, look, I've seen it, the miracles, you clearly are from God.

But he can't admit it publicly because he's a Pharisee and he's part of this group of people who actually are opposing Jesus.

So he meets with Jesus under cover of night.

The next time we see him is when Jesus is being discussed by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem and they're going, what do we do with this guy?

I think we need to kill him.

And Nicodemus kind of goes, hey, maybe we should consider giving him a fair trial like we normally do.

You know, like he doesn't come out and say, hey, I've met him.

He's the son of God.

I've seen the miracles.

He's like, hey, would you consider

just a fair trial?

How about that?

Still not willing to come out of the shadows.

Jesus dies.

And then what?

Nicodemus then, I believe,

almost like a guilt offering, contributes tens of thousands of dollars worth of perfumes and spices, helps bury the body.

Now there's no being in the closet about this.

And I believe

the secret.

is in John chapter 3.

John chapter 3, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and mentions Moses.

And that during the time of Moses, we actually portrayed this moment as a flashback in the episode that

people, the Israelites, were dying of serpent bites.

And God had Moses fashion a pole that was shaped like a cross, actually.

That's how you, when you read it in the Hebrew.

And he lifts it up, and all you have to do is look at it, and you're saved from the serpent bites, and you're healed.

He told that to Nicodemus.

So you can imagine when Nicodemus is at the crucifixion and seeing Jesus up on

a cross and providing the redemption that he had told Nicodemus he was going to provide, that Nicodemus went, oh,

Moses, he's the new Moses.

He's better than

the new covenant.

The new covenant.

And like, so the opportunity to kind of portray that.

We can do that and actually stay very true to scripture.

This is not, this is not, it doesn't take a whole lot of artistic imagination to go, John chapter 3.

Later in the book, he shows up again, and he's completely committed to Jesus, not hiding it anymore.

That's a fascinating storyline to portray and very, I believe, relatable to us today because there's plenty of people who are religious and who are practicing something and who really don't truly know Jesus.

And I think that's, those are the ones who can identify with Nicodemus.

Thank you for everything you've done.

Oh, thank you for having me.

I've loved it.

I've chatted with you about this a few years ago, right when the chosen was first coming, and you seemed to be kind of in on it pretty quickly.

Like,

I think you seemed to sense

something was

brewing.

Yeah.

There's

very few filmmakers

that could

say,

I'm going to make the Jesus story

that had the credibility that you had.

I mean, I just, it's

beautiful.

It's just beautiful.

Well, honestly, I mean, it's very kind of you to say, but it's also, I think some of that credibility may come from abject surrender.

I mean,

I am, I may, if any credibility I have is because I believe I'm the only credibility I have comes from him.

You know, so it's a.

Billy Graham told me once, everything I've done that was great or worthy, it was all his work.

Every mistake, all mine.

All mine.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

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