The View Hosts Confess Fandom for The Chosen: It’s ‘Revolutionary,’ Whoopi Says

The actor who portrays Jesus on The Chosen told the hosts of The View this week that the hit Bible-based series has helped people see Christ in a new light and that filmmakers have painstakingly worked to make the on-screen product as authentic as possible.

Actor Jonathan Roumie appeared on The View the same week that The Chosen, Season 4 (Episodes 1-3) opens in theaters. He quickly learned that the hosts watch the series.

“I am a huge fan,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said.

“My husband and I are huge fans of The Chosen,” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin later added.

Roumie has portrayed Jesus from the get-go in Season 1. The series is scheduled for seven seasons.

“We really take great pains to make these characters that most people know just from a few lines of Scripture [or] where they see them in stained glass windows or in statues — we take them off of those pedestals and make them relatable, real-life, people with marital problems, with issues of childbirth and the things that we go through today,” Roumie told the hosts.

“ … So by seeing essentially ourselves in these characters, like any great TV show, you start to identify and then the fact that it’s the greatest story ever told, now brings it to a whole other level. And they’re like, ‘Oh, I can relate to Jesus in a way that I never thought I could before.’”

The series is popular, Roumie said, in part because of the ethnic and racial diversity within the cast. Creator Dallas Jenkins and the writers “wanted to bring to the screen the most authentic portrayal of Jesus and His disciples in this story and its roots and its Jewishness and the diversity of the people and the colors and everybody that would have lived next to the seafaring towns.”

Jesus and His disciples traveled through “port cities,” Roumie said.

“So you had people from all walks of life, all colors, all shades that came through this place. And so it only felt right to just depict what would have been truly authentic.”

Goldberg said she enjoys how the series “shows the humanity of Jesus in a way we haven’t seen before, and highlights Him and the Apostles in a different way.”

“What’s really revolutionary is the way He wanted everybody to be invited to the table,” she said.

Roumie also recounted his early career, which involved success and then failure.

“I worked here in New York City after college in production. I was a location scout. And that was how I made a decent living,” he said. “… MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch was the first acting job I ever had. So from that point, I always had a curiosity about like, ‘Well, I wonder what this would look like if it went further?’ And fast forward to the housing market collapsing in 2008. I had booked a few other jobs, I started booking television and I thought, ‘Okay, well this is an opportunity to see if I can actually make this work.’ So I moved to L.A. and for eight years, I didn’t have the safety of the job that I left in New York.”

In L.A., Roumie made money at side jobs — driving rideshares and working in catering, for example. But it wasn’t enough to make a living.

“And [I had] gotten to the point where I was broke,” he said. “I was out of money. I was out of food. I was out of even government assistance for food. And the only thing I hadn’t done at that point was the thing that was left to do, which was to get on my knees and surrender my entire life and my career, and everything that I had up to that point over to God, because there wasn’t anything — I realized — I could do on my own.

“… It was almost six years ago now where I just said, ‘Jesus, I surrender myself to You. Take care of everything.’ And that day, I received this incomprehensible financial miracle that changed my life. And then three months later, I booked The Chosen.”

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

LISTEN: The Chosen’s Nick Shakoour Opens Up about His Faith Journey

Nick Shakoour, who portrays Zebedee, said that the series has had a significant impact on his life. His character is the father of James and John.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Salem Web Network and Salem Media Group.

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