Joel and Luke Smallbone Say UNSUNG HERO Honors Their Parents
By Movieguide® Contributor
Joel and Luke Smallbone explained how UNSUNG HERO honors their family and why creating a movie felt like a natural extension to their other projects.
“This isn’t really our story. This is our parent’s story, but we actually have a role. We take, basically, most of mom and dad’s life, and we condense it down into what feels like a year and a half kind of time frame, and it’s fascinating to look back now as an adult,” Luke told I Am Second.
“Being one of seven kids, it was just the reality you knew; sleeping on beds made out of clothes, moving halfway around the world, it was just the reality that we knew. And yet, when I reflect on it, there were so many things about it that were unsafe,” he continued. “We did not know where the next meal was going to come from, mom was six months pregnant with our little sister, we didn’t have any insurance or any way forward, we went to a hospital, we were half a world away from our cousins, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents and beyond.”
“Yet, with all of that against us, we felt very safe in one another’s love and in our parent’s love,” Luke added. “It became this great opportunity.”
A synopsis of the movie reads:
When David Smallbone’s successful music company collapses, he moves his family from Australia to the United States in search of a brighter future. With nothing more than their six children, their suitcases, and their love of music, David (for KING + COUNTRY’s Joel Smallbone) and his pregnant wife Helen (Daisy Betts) set out to rebuild their lives from the ground up. Based on a remarkable true story, a mum’s faith stands against all odds; and inspires her husband and children to hold onto theirs.
Even though the movie is about the Smallbone family, it gives an honest look at their life. Rather than romanticizing their origin, they highlighted the highs and the lows of their childhood.
“We stepped into UNSUNG HERO, and it felt like this natural extension of the family,” Joel said. “I think it’s worth noting, too, that this is certainly an honor project for our parents and for our family, but it’s not a glory project.”
“I mean, this really dives into the ego and the struggle of what it means to be a man. It really dives into, obviously, the UNSUNG HERO that is our mom and our sister,” he added.
“It is titled UNSUNG HERO, and I think, depending on the viewer and the stage of life, you see yourself in the story,” Joel told Movieguide®. “If you’re an 18-year-old girl, Rebecca, my sister, becomes sort of your unsung hero. And if you’re a mom and a wife, then my mom, Helen, is just such a great figure in real life and in the picture. And if you’re a husband or a father, and you’re trying to navigate your way through…wanting to protect and wanting to lift up your wife and your family, then you relate to David’s character.”
UNSUNG HERO hits theaters on April 26.
Movieguide® previously reported:
For King + Country’s Joel and Luke Smallbone recently sat down with Mike Huckabee to share the origins of their new movie UNSUNG HERO and discuss Joel’s “expensive therapy session” of playing the role of his dad.
“Soon after we arrived in Nashville, my dad lost the job opportunity that he had here,” Luke recalled. “And so we were stranded; No friends, no family, sleeping on beds made out of clothes and having to wait for a little sister to be born in a hospital and weren’t always quite sure where the next meal was going to come.”
“I’ve told that story for quite a number of years at our concerts and had a lot of people come up and say, ‘Man, look, you should write a book,’” he added.
Luke joked that as he and Joel were homeschooled, they were not able to “read or write very well,” so they decided to make a movie instead.
