‘There’s never been anything like The Chosen’

Dallas Jenkins, creator of immensely popular Jesus-show The Chosen, opens up to Ruadhán Jones about how his failure led to its success

The number one highest crowd-funded project of all time, at more than $16 million; the first ever multi-season adaptation of Christ’s life; watched by more than 50 million people worldwide; a 100% rating on review site Rotten Tomatoes – The Chosen has been, by most conceivable standards, a remarkable success.

Since the first four episodes of the multi-season adaptation of Christ’s life aired over Easter 2019, it has continued to make waves. With the first episode of season two having premiered to much fanfare on Easter Sunday, the hype is set to continue. The show has set out to be different, creator Dallas Jenkins told me.

Different

“‘Get used to different’, a key line from episode seven of season one – that’s been the motto of our whole show,” says Dallas on our Zoom call. “I think most portrayals about Jesus have been very stiff, formal and emotionally distant. That’s why The Chosen really exists because so many of the Jesus projects felt the same and I don’t think I loved most of them.

“Jesus of Nazareth [the 1977 mini-series], I think, is one of the better ones because it spends time on the moments between the stories. I think that’s what we do, we don’t rush the story from miracle to miracle. It’s a multi-season show, so it’s a very different medium. There’s never been a multi-season show about the life of Christ. That allows us the opportunity to do something different.”

The series is Dallas’ brainchild and passion-project in one. It’s the kind of project he wanted to do ever since falling in love with films after watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when in high school.

“When I was growing up, I remember loving television and loving movies but wondering, why aren’t there more movies and TV shows that reflect my experience, my faith background,” Dallas explains. “Whenever I do see one that does reflect my faith background, it doesn’t look or sound anything like the other stuff I like – it was usually not as high quality.

“But it was when I was a freshman in high school in ninth grade and I saw One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. When I saw that movie, everything changed for me. I thought, whatever that is, I want to do that. I want to arouse in people the kind of emotion that movie aroused in me – that set me on the path to making movies.”

The entertainment industry runs in Dallas’ blood, you could say. He’s the son of Jerry B. Jenkins, the exceptionally popular Christian novelist, best known for the Left Behind series, which sold more than 60 million copies worldwide.

“Because I grew up in a very strict Christian home, when I was growing up I didn’t see a whole lot of movies,” Dallas says. “But as I grew older, my parents – they loved movies too, they were very protective when I was growing up. Then shortly after college, when I graduated from university, I started working with a company that were making my dad’s books into movies… Then shortly thereafter I started my own company with my father.

Making movies

“I’ve been making movies for about 20 years. Nothing of course to the level of impact that The Chosen has had, but I believe the last 20 years have prepared me for this moment in my life.”

But when asked what prompted him to make The Chosen, Dallas smiles ruefully and says, “Actually, it was failure”. His career had appeared to be on the up-and-up when he filmed The Resurrection of Gavin Stone (2017), which had the backing of a number of heavyweight Hollywood studios.

“I had done it with these big Hollywood production companies who were really excited about it and wanted to do more movies with me in the future and then it bombed at the box office,” he continues. “My career just crashed effectively. All of those future projects that we were talking about went away and I got to the point where I really didn’t know if I had a future in this business.”

But while Dallas was struggling to process the failure and to figure out what to do next, someone reached out to him with advice that clarified his mind: “They said, your job is not to feed the five thousand, your job is only to provide the loaves and fish.”

”And so I realised I just want to be someone who provides the best five loaves and two fish that I can,” Dallas says. “Whatever that looks like and whether that’s successful or not is not my job to worry about. That’s what made me open minded to some crazy ideas.”

The first of these ideas was to shoot a short film for his church’s Christmas Eve service, typically attended by upwards of 20,000 people. The film centred on the nativity scene, but from the perspective of the shepherds. It was picked up by independent, Christian production company VidAngel and quickly went viral.

“That short film ended up going viral online and I had this idea to do a multi-season show about the life of Christ,” Dallas says. “I was binge-watching all these shows and wondering, ‘Why has there never been a multi-season show about Christ, that would be so cool’.

“The idea to crowdfund season one of The Chosen, which I thought was a ridiculous idea, I thought, well it’s not my job to worry whether it works or not, it’s someone else’s idea. I thought ok, what do I care I’m just making the best show that I can.

“We ended up generating $10 million, shattering the all-time crowdfunding record. All of this process with The Chosen has come from this notion that I’m just going to do what I believe God is calling me to do and not worry about the results. If my movie had succeeded, I would be doing other movies, I wouldn’t be doing The Chosen, so God for sure had a plan for me.”

Path

Having failed, Dallas was now set on the path to what he had always wanted to do – make faith-based entertainment of high-quality and using modern media. Every life-of-Christ, every artist, will have a vision of Christ that he wants to bring to the screen. So it was with Dallas – what he wants to bring out is “Christ’s humanity and his relationships with the disciples and with some of his enemies”.

“We believe that if you can see Jesus through the eyes of those who met him, you can be changed and impacted in the way they were,” Dallas says. “Most Jesus movies, the problem with them is they’re short. They try to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. You’re going from miracle to miracle, Bible verse to Bible verse, and you never get a chance to give any back story, you never get a chance to know anyone who’s interacting with Jesus.

“The Gospels weren’t written to tell Jesus’ relationships and to tell the day-to-day story, they were written to show Jesus greatest hits to prove that he was the messiah. So in the show, we include those great stories and miracles, but we spend more time in between and before those miracles.

“We meet those disciples before they meet Jesus, we meet the people who were changed by Jesus, we meet them early on in their lives so that when those changes happen, when they encounter Jesus, it’s that much more impactful. If you can identify with these people and the questions they had, then you can identify with the solution to those problems and the answer to those questions.

“That’s what we’re focusing on and by focusing on Jesus’ humanity – even though we’re not denying his divinity, we’re still showing the miracles and portraying Jesus as the Son of God – when you see him as a man and human being, that part of him in many ways enhances our experience of his divinity and this seems to be what’s impacting people so much.”

To that end, The Chosen focuses on the characters around Jesus, providing each of them with a narrative arc – a journey of development which they must take. In essence, it attempts to take the best that modern TV has to offer and adapt it to fit the life of Christ.

“What we did was we started with where they end up in the Gospels,” Dallas says. “You see where Simon Peter’s end is in the Gospels, how he denies Jesus three times at the cross, but then becomes a very passionate follower, then you see where Mary Magdalene ends up, where Nicodemus ends up.”

Backwards

“Then we work our way backwards because we want to make sure that those moments are earned. Like any good storytelling, TV especially, you want to have a beginning, middle and end, you want to have a journey for your character. So, in the first few episodes and in season one, we’re telling the before, the beginning of their journey.

“You see them before they meet Jesus, which I think is very important. That I think allows most of the audience to connect with them. So yeah, our character journey and our character arcs start in episode one and they’re not going to fully conclude until season seven.”

The first episode of season two aired this Sunday past and Dallas says that it provides hints already as to the key theme for the characters in season two.

“The main theme of season two is that Jesus’ fame is increasing, which is bringing in more friends and more enemies,” Dallas explains. “So you see the tension rising, even among the disciples who are trying to figure out – what does it look like to follow Jesus?

“You see that in episode one of season two, there’s already fighting among the disciples, there’s already confusion about what they’re supposed to do, what Jesus is supposed to do next. What does it look like to follow him? That’s something that we face today. Even our Bible study that we’re doing in addition to this show, it’s called What Does it Mean to be Chosen. That’s a question the disciples faced as well.”

Successful

The show has been successful across the world – it has also been successful across denominations, from Catholic to Greek Orthodox to Latter Day Saints (LDS). Series two was the first non-Mormon production to film on the Mormon version of ancient Israel in Goshen, Utah County. Although Jenkins is an Evangelical Protestant, he has advisors from Catholicism, Messianic Judaism and Evangelical Protestantism to ensure the show is respectful of as many perspectives as possible.

“I’m evangelical personally,” Dallas says. “But when I send the advisors the scripts and show them the episodes, it’s not that I’m trying to present a Catholic version or Jesus or a Protestant version of Jesus. I’m just trying to present Jesus, a Gospel version of Jesus, an authentic version of Jesus.”

Disagreements

“Most of the disagreements we have are based on debates we’ve had since Jesus was here. There’s not lots of disagreement about the stories of the Gospels – what they mean, what they represent, what we do as a result of those stories. But the thing that you see when you watch the show and the reason I think we’re seeing so many people from all different denominations – including LDS and Greek Orthodox – coming together and loving the show is that we’re not focused on the religious differences we have with each other.”

In entertainment, the show must ever go on, and so it is for Dallas – even while season two was being filmed, he was working on the script for the third.

“It never stops because we’re trying to get these seasons out as fast as we can,” he says. “We want to get on a schedule. We plan on shooting season three in the fall. I only finished filming season two a few weeks ago and the first episode came out Easter Sunday. It’s non-stop.”

Although he hasn’t a chance to rest on his laurels, given that the show has been such a success, it would be fair to think that Dallas is immensely proud. When asked if he is proud of the show’s success, he pauses for a moment to think.

“Well, I’m very happy with what’s happening so far, but when I sit down to write season two or season three, the blank page on my computer doesn’t care at all about how successful season one was,” he begins. “It’s really hard to write a good television show, it’s really hard to bear the weight and responsibility of telling the stories of Jesus honestly and authentically.

“If I think about the success of it, it’ll cripple me. I just can’t worry about that. I’m proud, yes, of the hard work, but I’m more humbled than anything that God has chosen me to tell these stories, that God has blessed me with such favour and is changing people’s lives. I’m proud of the work we’re doing, but we’ve a long way to go.”

The Chosen is available to watch for free by downloading The Chosen app from Google or Apple stores. The first episode of season two came out April 4 and a new episode will be released weekly. You can also purchase the show’s companion Bible study What Does it Mean to be Chosen.