Sam Sorbo Talks Working with Husband, ‘Unforgiveness’ Culture, and New Movie
By Cooper Dowd, Movieguide® Staff
Actor Sam Sorbo, wife to actor Kevin Sorbo, recently sat down with Movieguide® to discuss their joint project, MIRACLE IN EAST TEXAS.
The comedy starring Sam and her husband is based on real-life accounts of oil-drilling during the depression. The Sorbos also produced the movie, with Kevin as director.
“I’ve worked with him so much. I mean, we met on the set, so we’ve been together for quite a while and are loving it,” Sorbo told Moviegduide®. “It’s a really lovely partnership. I’m really grateful for the collaborative experience that I have with him.”
While the movie has elements of faith and forgiveness, Sam noted that it was their goal to create an entertaining comedy that strikes a balance with their biblical values.
“That’s an important thing for me on the projects that I’ve worked on today—striking that balance,” she explained. “It’s actually not as hard as you might think. It just isn’t done very often.”
Sorbo said that it wasn’t until she had to portray her character on screen that the gravity of the story and its themes hit home. The mother three added that it’s important to put lessons learned into practice—a value she believes is useful in both education and entertainment.
“It’s always better when you put it into practice,” she said. “It’s not enough to witness it. You have to put it into practice.”
“There’s a lot that you can take away from this movie, the historical aspect of it, the entrepreneurial aspect of it, the freedom mindsets, and that it embodies America and shows how people work together for their common good,” she continued. “Most importantly, the aspect of forgiveness, which is countercultural these days.”
“We live in a culture we call a cancel culture, but it really is unforgiveness,” she added.
Despite its powerful theme of forgiveness, Sorbo said that she hopes more audiences will be open to watching MIRACLE IN EAST TEXAS for its entertainment value alone.
“The purpose of the movie is not to teach you about forgiveness,” she said. “The purpose of the movie is to entertain you. But there’s no reason that in that entertaining, you can’t be empowered or emboldened or enlightened.”
“There are a lot of movies that are countercultural that are accomplishing great change in our nation,” she continued. “Movies have a great deal of power. That’s why I do the movies that I do.”
Not only is the movie based on true events, Sorbo said that she hopes it will shed light on a lesser known part of American history.
“It is a story that ought to be known because when we entered World War II, we needed to supply the allies and ourselves with fuel. The way we did that was from the East Texas oil strike. And that’s how we won the war…” she said. “That’s amazing history. We should know that.”
Movieguide® has yet to release their review of MIRACLE IN EAST TEXAS, but check back to Movieguide.org soon for the full review.