THE CHOSEN Director, Cast Detail What to Expect From Season 4
By Movieguide® Contributor
In a recent interview with Movieguide®, THE CHOSEN director Dallas Jenkins and actors Brandon Potter, Nick Shakoour, Shaan Sharma and Kirk B. R. Woller shared what to expect in Season 4 and how a “fish and loaves” attitude comes to fruition.
Brandon Potter, who plays Quintus, opened up about how THE CHOSEN transformed his life.
“The show has sort of impacted nearly every aspect of my life, he told Movieguide®. “I mean, you know, it’s nice to have a job, but that’s like the least sort of seismic change in my life…And I also feel like I’ve really gotten to satisfy or at least explore my sort of driving force as an artist, which is to really bring people together. And the show has done that in amazing ways. You know, we’re on nearly every streaming platform and dozens of countries and dozens of languages. And all of these people don’t have the same viewpoints, but they’re all coming together around this show. And that is, I feel extraordinarily grateful and honored to be a part of that.”
In Season 4, Potter’s character will begin to see the impact of Jesus’ influence.
“In Seasons 1 and 2 and 3, Quintus sort of got to act unimpeded. Right, he kind of got to do whatever he wanted. I mean, obviously, Jesus is gaining influence and followers and all of that stuff. But that seems more like an annoyance, as opposed to being like, you know, kind of genuinely consequential,” Potter continued. “And in Season 4, there are consequences. And they are very, very real. And I think that they’re big enough to maybe even…break Quintus.”
Jenkins shared that he tries to bring a “fish and loaves” mentality to the set. He brings the figurative fish and loaves, like in Matthew 14, and God multiplies them. He expands on the work that Jenkins and the cast and crew put into THE CHOSEN.
Actor Nick Shakoour, who plays Zebedee, saw God multiply “loaves and fish” on a personal level.
“[It’s] amazing, mind-blowing, spectacular,” Shakoour told Movieguide®. “And it’s a different path that I did not anticipate when I decided to go into acting….I started off in voiceover, and then I decided in my mid-30s I wanted to start doing on-camera acting, and, in my mind, I pictured just doing mainstream things, and…lo and behold, I didn’t realize how God would use a project like this to start making it mainstream and then it made me realize well, wow…God is mainstream. God is everywhere. So he’s mainstreaming all over the place. So it’s been unbelievable how one film that Dallas wrote and shot and directed as the birth of Christ was taken and multiplied into what it’s become now. It’s awesome.”
The actor shared that as his relationship with God grows, it impacts his role and his performance.
“I feel Him all around 24 hours a day. And it’s I’ve really understanding now what it means to have a relationship with Him, compared to just praying off into the ether distance without really feeling him around. It’s so easy now….I’m not acting the scene, like he’s acting me,” Skahoour said.
Sharma chatted about the growth of his character, Schmuel.
“At the end of Season 3, we see Schmuel finally catch up and confront Jesus after three seasons of being skeptical, then being convinced he’s a false prophet and then actively trying to get him held accountable for this false prophecy,” Sharma told Movieguide®. “And then he actually gets to meet them face to face at the end of Season 3, and then they go up a hill to pray together. And that’s kind of a cliffhanger for our relationship. And so in Season 4, we actually get to see how that impacted well. So I think anybody who is following a small story with interest is going to be pleased to see that there was an impact there.”
Woller told Movieguide that his character, Gaius, weighs his options in Season 4. Things start to click, and he considers the costs of following Jesus.
“If I go there [toward Jesus], I’m gonna get killed. There was the sacramentum that you take with Caesar and Rome. It’s like a contract, right? If I go over here, all I could lose everything, my family, everybody, my everything, my status,” Woller said. “So it’s dicey…There’s a pantheon of gods over here [in Rome]. There’s one over here [Jesus]. That just makes so much sense to me.”
Jenkins also opened up about the heavy themes in Season 4. He feels that the timeline of the season matched up with his own.
“Covering some of the sadness of Jesus is such a delicate issue,” Jenkins shared. “I don’t think we would have been able to do season for several years ago, I think I needed some of those seasons to mature as a filmmaker to mature as a storyteller, and to know Jesus more and to understand the stories better to be able to capture and portray some of these delicate moments. Like how would Jesus react when he’s angry? How would Jesus react when he’s when he hears about his cousin getting his head chopped off?”
Check out Movieguide®’s full interview here:
Movieguide® previously reported on Season 4’s theme:
THE CHOSEN creator Dallas Jenkins revealed that season 4 will have more sorrow mixed with joy as the series reaches its halfway mark and Jesus’ journey continues toward the cross.
“We’re getting closer and closer to what we know is coming,” Jenkins told Fox News. “There’s some extreme pain and sadness that’s coming soon in future seasons.”
“And of course, there’s also some extreme joy that’s coming. But on the way there, Jesus is getting increasingly sad because of the fact that things are getting increasingly heavy,” he continued.
The Direct reported on Friday that the official poster for THE CHOSEN Season 4 has just been released. The poster, a collage of people’s photos inside a side profile of Jesus, will be used in the show’s theatrical release. Episodes 1, 2 and 3 will be released in theatres in the U.S. and Canada in the first two weeks of February 2024.
CHRISTMAS WITH THE CHOSEN: HOLY NIGHT will also release in theaters soon. Deseret News reported, “The Chosen” will release a Christmas special in theaters on Dec. 12. The special will feature a special performance from Andrea Bocelli.” The new special will also incorporate previous Christmas specials, THE MESSENGERS and THE SHEPHERD.