This is Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear
weekday afternoons on the Drive. If his name sounds familiar, it's because Dallas
Jenkins is the son of the celebrated Left Behind author Jerry Jenkins. He is
also a creator, executive producer, co founder, writer in his own right,
and director of the international hit series The Chosen, which you can now
see Sundays at eight Eastern on the CW and he joins us Now, Dallas,
good morning. Let's start with how this project was financed. I bet
a lot of people don't realize how this happened. Yeah, thank you,
and thanks for having me on, Lee. Yeah, it's quite a bizarre
story. I won't get into all of it, but it actually was birthed
from failure of the big movie that I had released nationwide, bomb at the
box office. All the Hollywood dreams that I'd had because I'd gotten a chance
to work with some of the big producers in Hollywood on this film, they
all kind of went away and I was left with a very little future,
and I ended up doing a short film for my church's Christmas Eve service.
It was about the birth of Christ from the perspective of the shepherds, and
that's when I had the idea. While I was making that on my friend's
farm in Illinois, twenty minutes from my house, I came up with the
idea for the show. Well, when that short film ended up being released
on social media and going viral, at the end of it, I said,
hey, I've got this idea for a show about Jesus and his life,
and it's going to be done a little bit different than normal, and
it's got backstory and context and human you know, we kind of explore the
humanity of all the followers of Jesus. And you can invest in it and
here's you know, here's how you're doing. And it was a crowdfund opportunity
and sixteen thousand people from around the world financed it season one the tune of
ten million dollars, which shattered the all time crowdfunding record for media projects.
And so season one came out based on that crowdfund and since then, I
wouldn't I don't know if i'd still use the word crowdfunded, but I would
say, because the show is, you don't have to pay for it.
The fact that the show exists is because of people who just choose to pay
for it, much like they chose to invest in it five years ago.
So it's been quite a unique journey. There's no studio or big network or
anything that's financing this thing. The CW is now airing, of course,
the first three seasons, but this was financed by the people and David Dallas
Jenkins is the writer, producer and director of The Chosen, now seen on
the CW. Thank god for the CW. I think they're getting everybody through
this strike recently. With apologies to the strike, I'm not trying to condemn
the strike. Yeah, and we were able to, ironically enough, in
season four. The strike happened when we were two weeks away from production,
and the Screen Actors Guild fortunately gave us an interim agreement to finish our season.
The season four is completed, we'll be releasing next year. But yeah,
c W has been great, not only airing The Chosen, but yeah,
because there's been a slowdown in Hollywood significantly of original content. They've it
looks like they've been just finding it everywhere. They've been looking for it all
over the world and finding ways to make sure that their schedule is packed with
stuff that people might not have seen before. The story of Christ. Dallas
Jenkins with us, writer, producer, director of the CW's That Chosen Sundays
at eight Eastern. By the way, the story of Christ has been done
and done again, and you see different interpretations, whether it's Jesus Christ Superstar,
where Christ has all this greatness thrust upon him and he's very self aware,
to many other specials where Christ is kind of wandering in the desert like
everybody else. But you take a different approach and that you humanize Jesus Christ.
Yeah, it's interesting phrasing. I would say Jesus Christ has always been
human, of course, but often we've dehumanized him by putting him on the
plain glass windows, by seeing him as a statue, or in the portrayal
and audio vision portrayal, he's often a white guy who's very boring and who
speaks in James English, and that's not accurate and it certainly is not something
that would have caused for someone who would have caused thousands of people to want
to be around him all the time. And I think that what the Chosen
is doing what we hear over and over again, and this is true for
non believers as well. There's plenty of people who aren't believers that Jesus was
the son of God who are obsessed with the show, who are going,
okay, wow, these people two thousand years ago were human beings just like
me. Now, of course we know Jesus was also the son of God
and did miracles and was perfect. But when you see him as a living,
breathing person who lived a life that we lived and experienced the same things
we experienced, it really does change what we've done to Jesus historically. And
we've heard from from Jewish people, not even even even Jewish non believers,
who are saying, oh wow, okay, we we didn't even we hadn't
even heard that these were Jewish stories before. And uh. And I think
that's what has been kind of the secret sauce of the show. Well,
has this been part of the evangelism on your part or did you have a
personal interest in in in I'm going to say it again, humanizing the story.
Well, I have come to the to the point in my life where
I just go, Okay, my job is to provide the five loaves and
two fish, and God got responsible for the multiplication and that that that applies
to not only the success of the show, it even applies to the so
called evangelism of the show, which is I'm not sitting down at a computer
screen when I'm writing it, thinking, all right, how am I going
to evangelize today? How is this show going to convert anyone? That That
can't be my goal. That's that's up to God. I'm just trying to
make a great TV show. The thing I'm the number one thing spiritually that
I'm trying to avoid not trying. I'm obsessed with not going to violate the
character and intentions of Jesus in the Gospels. That shame on me if that
ever happens. Because, of course, so much to the content of the
show is not directly from scripture. It's inspired by scripture. It's rooted in
scripture. Scripture is my primary source of truth and inspiration. But when I
when I have Jesus saying hello to somebody and laughing at a joke that didn't
actually directly come from scripture. So when I do that, I have to
make sure that I am at least capturing the character and intentions of Jesus and
the Gospels. And that is that is what I'm making sure that I do
all the while not making sure that when people watch this on the CW,
it doesn't feel like a church service. It feels like a TV show,
like any other show that they would watch. But yes, the content might
be a little bit different and uh and you might have a different kind of
personal experience with it than you might have to a normal show. Dallas Jenkins
with US writer, producer director, the CW's that chosen Sundays at eight o'clock.
You know, that's what I was getting at, because when I read
scripture, that's what I see. I see a Christ that enjoyed going to
dinner parties. He enjoyed going to weddings, He enjoyed people's company. It
wasn't just a gentle Jesus meek and mild all the time. Absolutely not.
And that's one of the beautiful things about Jonathan Rumy's portrayal is he got both
the masnity of Jesus a guy who was a tradesman, a craftsman, a
carpenter, who walked the dusty roads of first century Galilee. And I think
that's that's something that when you watch it and you see it kind of in
real life. It brings it home for you and it just again takes it
out of stained glass windows or just black and white. And then when you
do read the Gospels, then again it's like we hear, we've heard this
with mind numbing regularity. That I'd like to say is the people say,
people saying I have my experience now is even more alive. I'm seeing it
clearly. When I read the Bible, it now makes it now makes even
more more sense to me because these were human, human beings. Dallas Jenkins,
writer, producer, director of the CW's The Chosen Sundays at eight o'clock.
You can also see it on other platforms like tb in and UpTV now
in it's fourth season. It's worth a watch, especially if you love this
kind of stuff and uh, whether or not you want to get back in
touch with your religious feelings. It's it's a good store. There's no doubt
about that. Dallas Jenkins, thanks for bringing it to us and joining us
today. Thank you so much for having me on. Thanks for listening to
Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to
The Drive live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation