For Jonathan Roumie, being cast to play Jesus Christ in “The Chosen” was “an answer to prayer.”
Roumie sat down with political commentator Tucker Carlson for Thursday’s "The Tucker Carlson Show" and discussed landing the role of Jesus on “The Chosen” and the impact it has had on his life.
Prior to working with “The Chosen” creator Dallas Jenkins on the series, Roumie already considered Jenkins a friend and colleague.
He had previously worked with Jenkins as an actor on several projects, including by playing Jesus in a handful of vignettes, Roumie told Carlson.
So when an opportunity to work with Jenkins on a short film called “The Two Thieves” came up, Roumie auditioned. He wasn’t cast in his desired role, but returned to auditions to try for the role of Jesus, instead.
Jenkins knew “about 10 seconds into the audition” Roumie was the right person to play Jesus in the short film, Roumie recalled during the new interview.
The short film became “the foundational bones of the concept of ‘The Chosen,’” he said. A couple years later, Jenkins reached back out to Roumie and asked him if he would like to play Jesus again — this time in a TV series.
“I jumped at the chance,” he told Carlson. “I had now played Jesus for him a few times. I was getting really comfortable with the role.”
He continued, “For whatever reason, God was putting me in these situations, in these stories about Jesus, so often, in such a relatively short period of time. In a few years, I’d play Jesus, like, five‚six, seven times. And I started to think, ‘Well, there must be something to this. I don’t know what it is yet.’ And then when I got the call for ‘The Chosen,’ the penny dropped. It was like, oh, all of that was preparation for this.”
The pressure of playing Jesus on TV
While filming one of Jesus' first sermon scenes in Season 1, there was a moment when Roumie felt overcome with the weight of playing Jesus, he told Carlson.
He felt unworthy repeating “holy words said by the holiest being that ever walked the face of the earth.”
Roumie said, “I was starting to feel panicked and overwhelmed. ... I’ve only had one panic attack in my life, and it started to feel like it was creeping into that.”
Roumie asked to take a brief break from filming the scene, and Jenkins helped calm him down with the simple reminder that “none of us is truly worthy.”
Roumie said he’s felt much of the pressure ease since that pivotal conversation with Jenkins.
“For whatever reason God saw fit to put me in that role — and not somebody else," Roumie said. “Nobody else auditioned. There weren’t auditions for the role.”
As “The Chosen” has surged in popularity around the world, Roumie believes God has protected him from the “magnitude” and “weight” of the role.
“Sometimes I can feel it,” he said. “Most of the time I think I’m shielded from it, because I think if I was aware of exactly what that implication was — even for a single person — it would crush me.”