‘This Will Stay With Me Forever’—Jonathan Roumie Tells Father Mike Schmitz Portraying Jesus’ Crucifixion Left Him ‘Raw’

Roumie said that Robert Powell’s portrayal of Jesus in the “Jesus of Nazareth” miniseries in 1977 was a key inspiration for his own depiction of Jesus. The miniseries “affected me so deeply as a kid,” said Roumie, “and it just confirms the power of media and how important it is as an actor, especially, to pick roles responsibly.”

There were other experiences that Roumie had as a child that helped prepare him for and even seemed to foreshadow his later portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion. One was that when he was 12 years old, Roumie re-enacted Jesus’ Passion in his backyard.

He hammered planks of wood together to create a life-size cross, created a crown of thorns, and painted blood on the crown and the cross. Then he carried the cross around the outside of his house to a cinder block, which was his version of Golgotha. 

“Who does that?” Roumie asked. “Like, what was going on with me? So, literally, the Lord used that program to plant a seed in my head which would then find its way 33 years later.” The actor said that he had forgotten that memory from his childhood until he was doing some Passion plays prior to “The Chosen.” 

Another experience Roumie had that prepared him for portraying Jesus’ crucifixion was the bullying he experienced as a child. “I was bullied as a kid a lot,” he said, “and I had to kind of look at what Jesus went through as a righteous man and a peaceful man and meek and humble and see just the level of devastation and terrorized bullying that he received to the point of death.” 

Roumie speculated that the bullying “might have been part of the reason that led me to re-enact the Passion as something that I could relate to. And I think all of that prepared me for this role. Everything in my life has prepared me for this role.”

“It feels authentic that I went through that as a kid and my compassion increased and my empathy increased,” he said, “and now I’m playing the most compassionate, empathetic human being that was God in the universe for all time.”

“So I can lend that experience in his suffering and in his empathy,” said Roumie, “even in wanting to forgive his enemies, which I had to do.” 

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“And like I was beaten pretty bad,” Roumie said. “And so I had to offer up all of my past trauma to him as I was recreating it, knowing that that was part of my own personal sacrifice, was my own offering for him on behalf of what he suffered for humanity.”

Roumie described how filming the crucifixion of Jesus impacted the crew and himself and how he expects it will affect audiences. He believes that the show’s portrayal of Jesus’ kindness and humanity up to this point will make Jesus’ brutal suffering all the more appalling to viewers. “The minute he even gets slapped, it’s going to really shock people,” said Roumie. “Like, I’m still a little bit raw from the whole last six months of filming it.”

During filming, when Jesus first got slapped, the crew’s reaction was noticeable. Roumie described it as, “‘Oh gosh…what are we in for?’…which is what made this the most brutal thing that we’ve ever done, any of us professionally.”

“Thankfully, we have the resurrection left to shoot…the good news,” he added.

Roumie said that he prayed to God prior to filming the crucifixion, asking God to allow him “a fraction of a fraction of the experience of what he went through. And he came through.”

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Part of this unpleasant answer to prayer came in the form of a serious shoulder injury that Roumie had to deal with during filming, as well as other painful physical experiences involved in filming the crucifixion.