'The Chosen' star Jonathan Roumie and creator Dallas Jenkins on how faith turned their lives around

"The Chosen" star Jonathan Roumie and series creator Dallas Jenkins opened up about leaning on their faith in their darkest times.

The actor, who stars as Jesus in the biblical drama series, and the show's co-writer and director told Fox News Digital about how turning to God transformed their lives at their lowest moments.

"Life literally backed me into a corner until I got on my knees in front of my crucifix and poured out my heart to God," Roumie said.

In 2009, Roumie moved from New York to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

"The first year I basically blasted through my savings, and it was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated," he said. 

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Eight years later, Roumie said he was juggling six or seven side hustles to stay afloat.

"All of a sudden, for this one span of time, I couldn't even get a catering job, and I had bills come in and I had rent," he said. "And I got to the point on a Saturday morning in May in 2018 where I was out of money. I woke up 80 bucks overdraft, I had 20 bucks in my pocket and I had all my bills coming, and I had enough food to last me the day. So, I didn't know what I was going to do."

It was at the moment that Roumie said he decided to give his life over to God.

"I'd always had a relationship with my faith, but I had never surrendered my career so viscerally or felt that I had no other choice before," he said. "So, I think God kind of knew that and said, ‘I need everything from you.’"

"Life literally backed me into a corner until I got on my knees in front of my crucifix and poured out my heart to God."

— Jonathan Roumie

He continued, "And in order to do that, I need to bring you to the edge of the cliff and give it all to Him. And I did that day. That morning. And I said, 'It's no longer my problem. It's your problem, God. So, you're going to see me through this? Your yoke is easy. Your burden is light. I'm giving you mine. And whatever happens, happens.'"

Roumie told Fox News Digital that though nothing had changed about his circumstances, he immediately felt that a weight been lifted.

"I didn't know where anything was going to come from after that, but it didn't matter anymore because I resigned to surrender [to] it."

That afternoon, Roumie returned to his apartment to find four checks in his mailbox from some sources of which he said still "mystify" him to this day.

"All I can say is that God provided me a financial miracle when I needed it, when I completely gave myself over to his care."

Three months later, Roumie received a call from Jenkins, with whom he had worked on several projects years earlier. The "What If…" director told him that he planned to make four episodes of a series, though he wasn't sure if it would go anywhere.

"I'm like, 'Yes, yes, please. Yeah, I'll take that.'" he said.

At the time, Jenkins had also hit one of the lowest points of his life after his Christian comedy-drama movie, "The Resurrection of Gavin Stone," flopped at the box office.

"All I can say is that God provided me a financial miracle when I needed it, when I completely gave myself over to his care."

— Jonathan Roumie

"I was actually coming off of a big career failure," he told Fox News Digital. "My movie had bombed at the box office back in 2017, and so I was licking my wounds a little bit and I dusted off a script that I'd written a couple of years earlier for my church's Christmas Eve service."

The script, which was titled "The Shepherd," told the story of the birth of Jesus from the shepherd's perspective. Jenkins made the script into a short film that he shot on a friend's nearby farm in Illinois. While filming the project, Jenkins began to envision creating a series.

"I was binge-watching some shows at the time and I thought, 'There's never actually been a multi-season show about the life of Christ,'" he said. "There have been movies, there have been miniseries, but there hasn't been a multi-season show where you had the opportunity to take your time, build some backstory, build the cultural context, the historical context, some of which you don't necessarily get in the Gospels, and you definitely don't get in some of these movies and miniseries where you don't have as much time to develop these storylines."

"And I thought, ‘Man, this could be really interesting,’" Jenkins said.

Though "The Shepherd" was only intended for Jenkins' church in Elgin, Illinois, it caught the attention of streaming platform Angel Studios.

"They had the idea to raise the money through crowdfunding for season 1, which I thought was ridiculous," Jenkins said. "And the short film, they decided to put out on social media. And then I, at the end of it, said, 'Hey, if you want to invest in this idea for a TV show, here's how you do it.'"

"And $10 million from 19,000 people around the world came in, shattering the all-time crowdfunding record," he said. "And the rest is history."

After the first season was released, Jenkins said its viewership grew slowly at first. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he and the team at Angel Studios decided to release it free of charge on YouTube for a couple of weeks as a gesture of goodwill.

"We told people, 'You don't have to pay for it, but if you want to, here's how you do it,'" he said. "And our income quadrupled that first night."

After the success of the "pay it forward" model, the producers decided to continue releasing the show for free and financing future seasons through voluntary donations. By 2021, "The Chosen" had become the first crowdfunded project in history after viewers contributed $40 million to the series' production, per the Wall Street Journal.

Despite the success of "The Chosen," which is now in its third season, Jenkins told Fox News Digital that his priorities completely changed after the events of 2017.

"I used to be someone who cared deeply about box office results, about the numbers, about the viewers," he said. "I was trying to be affirmed not only by Hollywood but by viewers. It was very important to me. God took all of that away from me when I had my career failure back in 2017 when my movie bombed."

He continued, "And so, I genuinely have not focused on the results or the numbers. When I'm sitting in front of a blank computer screen writing, that blank computer screen doesn't give a crap about how successful the previous season was or how many people are watching. You still have to come up with compelling content that honors the character of Jesus in the Gospels."

Jenkins believes that the show resonates with viewers because it depicts the humanity of the people living in 1st century Galilee, including Jesus.

"Of course, we portray Jesus as the Son of God as divine," he said. "He does miracles. There's no question about that. But we also show him telling jokes, dancing with his friends, laughing at jokes, dressing a wound, you know, things that are human."

"Fixing his own meals, doing his bedtime prayers," Jenkins continued. "Those things in many ways haven't diminished his Godness. They have, in fact, for many people, made it even more beautiful."

"They're like, ‘The creator of the universe lived among us and lived like I did.’ And I think that's been probably the secret sauce of the show, is that the dialogue and the portrayal feels authentic. And I think that for many people is unique in the space of biblical films."

Roumie told Fox News Digital that playing the role of Jesus has changed his life "in every way possible."

"It's deepened my faith," he said. "It's deepened my trust. It's gotten me to a place spiritually where I am fully reliant on God, on a higher power, on something bigger than me.

"And it's allowed me to not worry about the things that I used to worry about. I mean, I still have problems like everybody else. But I don't stress about it in the same way. And I don't react the same way. Or at least I try not to."

"I'm still human, so I'm not actually Jesus," he added. "So, I do the best I can to navigate those problems."

"I go to God with all of them, and whatever happens, happens. And fortunately, the more I've done that, the better things have gotten."

"I was binge-watching some shows at the time and I thought, 'There's never actually been a multi-season show about the life of Christ.'"

— Dallas Jenkins

Jenkins told Fox News Digital that he was blown away by Roumie's audition and that his portrayal of Jesus was the best that he had ever seen.

"He captures both the masculinity and the gentleness, which sometimes hasn't been the case in previous portrayals," he said. "There's been some great portrayals, of course, but a lot of times you'll see kind of this stoic, kind of soft person, you know, formal, distant, emotionally distant portrayal of Jesus."

And then sometimes you'll see a portrayal from someone maybe who doesn't believe, who's trying to say something new about Jesus," Jenkins added. "And Jonathan, he loves Jesus, which helps. But also, he is really tapped into something that's really, like I said earlier, is real and authentic about the portrayal."

Roumie also credited the authenticity of the performances and the story for the series' popularity and believes that viewers are able to relate to the humanity of the characters.

"Because they can see themselves in one of a dozen characters or more that are in the show that are expertly written by our team and performed by our super-talented cast," he said.  "I think we all try to bring our own humanity to the role and thus the way it's written and how relatable the storylines are and the characters are with each other."

"Inevitably, people see something of themselves or their situations or their strife or their struggles played out, mirrored, paralleled in the storylines. And so when they see them going through something, it's like, 'Wait a minute, I'm going through the same thing.'"

Roumie explained that playing the role of Jesus had inspired him to look at the ways in which he can grow as person and in his relationships with others while on this Earth.

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"There's always something and some way to improve on in your relationships with people," he noted. "It's never done just because you label yourself as a Christian or a non-Christian or whatever, or you if you have some level of achievement in your life. It doesn't mean anything."

He continued, "It's about how we do this, you and I, how do we treat each other? How do we treat each other under stress, under difficult circumstances, in the best of times? It's gotten me to take a look at and hopefully make an effort to be just a better human overall."

The third season of "The Chosen" debuted on Dec. 11 and is available to watch for free on "The Chosen" app, the Angel app and the show's website. The series can also be streamed on Fox Nation, VidAngel, Netflix, Peacock and Amazon Prime Video.

During their interviews with Fox News Digital, Roumie and Jenkins teased what viewers can expect from the coming episodes.

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"The theme of season 3 is: ‘Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.' It's something that Jesus said in the Gospels," Jenkins said. "He says that in the season finale of season 3. He's giving a sermon. It's not a spoiler because we've made it public that we portray the Feeding of the 5000, a famous gospel story, and we portray that in season 3. And you see in season 3, the weary and heavy-laden part. There's some pain, there's some tragedy, there's some sadness, there's confusion."

"Honeymoon's over," Roumie said. "The disciples are getting a taste of what it means to follow Christ in totality. And it's not comfortable for everybody. So, it's going to be a ride."

Jenkins went on to say, "Eventually, when you watch the whole season, He gives rest. And I think in a time right now that we're going through in this world, which is similar to the 1st century, which is very divided, there's oppression, there's a religious divide, there's cultural divide, there's sociological divide, gender divide. And that existed back then, too."

"And I think this show has some resonance now, even though it portrays people who lived 2,000 years ago."

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