Jonathan Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus in the critically acclaimed series “The Chosen,” opened up to Lila Rose about the physical and emotional aftermath of portraying Jesus’ crucifixion scene in the show’s upcoming season.
During a recent episode of the “Lila Rose Show,” Rose, founder and CEO of the pro-life organization Live Action, asked Roumie whether he experienced any pain while filming scenes that portrayed the scourging and crucifixion of Christ.
“Anytime you put yourself in a set of circumstances where mentally, psychologically, and emotionally you are trying to convince yourself that something is true, your brain doesn’t know the difference,” Roumie told Rose.
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“If you’re telling your brain something hurts and you’re summoning this emotional life, which essentially is that of suffering, your brain just interprets it all as, like, this is wrong, it’s fight or flight, and your body starts reacting accordingly,” he said.
Jonathan Roumie Carried the Cross With an Injured Shoulder
Roumie referenced Jim Caviezel’s 2004 portrayal of Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ.”
“There were elements where it was physically painful at times,” Roumie shared. But he said, “You know, I didn’t get struck by lightning, and I didn’t have to have heart surgery or anything like I think Jim Caviezel did.”
“I dealt with stuff and my own sort of things,” Roumie continued. “For instance, one of the first couple of days of filming for me, I had to run in the scene, and we were shooting in these sand dunes and my sandal caught the lip of this dune, and I went straight down headlong.”
He said that he was “running pretty hard” and tried to “roll into it” in an attempt to break his fall.
Roumie thought that he avoided injury, but after leaping to his feet, he immediately felt a tightness and pain from his shoulder to his chest.
“I thought, ‘Oh, something is definitely wrong,’” he said.
An MRI later revealed that he had slightly dislocated his AC joint and was told he would be in pain for a few months.
“I said, ‘A few months?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Oh,’” Roumie recalled, because “it just so happens that would be the side I carried the cross on…the shoulder I would carry the beam on.”
