J Roumie

Work with faith #faith

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

This is it.
Finally.
No, for reals. I think.

I thought I said goodbye filming my last day on-camera in the @thechosentv.
Days later, I thought I said farewell again, as we wrapped the entire series itself on our sound stage, despite knowing that marketing days were still ahead.
But this Sunday, it was evident in my bones that not only had I spoken my last speech… not only had we filmed our last shot… but this would be my final day on the hallowed ground that connected me to the television series that changed my life, for what may be the rest of my life (but only God really knows).

This moment I share with you here is part of the culmination of not only the last eight years playing the Savior of the world, but the last twelve years playing Him as part of my creative collaboration with the show’s visionary creator, Dallas Jenkins.

To have the divine blessing of working on a show for eight years, and then to be gifted this cherry on top — walking onto set as Christ, to be captured on film by one of the great masters of the photographic arts, Annie Leibovitz, while listening to John Debney’s haunting score fill the spaces of the set — was at once transcendent and otherworldly.

I was, for a moment, completely speechless.
Seems to be a theme for me this past month.

I cannot stress to you the profound beauty and brilliance of the compositions that Annie, her team, and our cast and team have had the opportunity to create together.

A divine collaboration, if ever there was one. And I cannot wait for you to see the fruit of our intense labor, beginning with Season 6 (on @primevideo Nov 15) and continuing through the release of the final images from these shoots.

Our week creating these stills was a reality that my castmates and I could scarcely wrap our minds around.

God, in His goodness, is profoundly mysterious and deliberately sweet. The thank-you’s He’s given us in these final moments of the most important series of our lives are beyond anything any of us could have even imagined.
I do hope you’ll join us this season as we enter into the end of this story… which ultimately is the beginning of another.

I will write more as I am able. I just need a moment in between the chaos to catch my breath. Love and Blessings, - JR 🙏🏽♥️✝️

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

My friends…the hour has finally come. 🥹

“As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.” - 2 Tim 4:6-7

Thank you all for supporting and praying for me, the show @thechosentv, my cast and crew and my team all these years.

Stay tuned. More to come, when I find the words.

With love,
Jonathan 🙏🏽♥️

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Can’t wait to read my buddy @GarySinise’s new book! Congrats brother! 🙏🏽♥️

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

"Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you." (John 17:1)

Upon Himself, he bore all our sins that through His sacrifice, we may have eternal life. 🙏🏽♥️

Season 6 streams on @PrimeVideo November 15. @thechosentv Crucifixion film releases in theaters March 12, 2027.

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

"For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:17)

My friends, the time is near. 🙏🏽😔

Watch the final hours of Our Lord's earthly life in season 6 of @thechosentv streaming November 15 on @PrimeVideo.

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

The adventure begins soo-…okay nope. I won’t even say it. 😉🌿

What I will say is that The Chosen in the Wild with my good friend @BearGrylls is streaming ON @primevideo August 9!
👀⛰️���

Thank you to @AmazonMGMStudio, @thechosentv and @LightWorkers 🙏🏽♥️

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Yeah nope….Make these setting changes!

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Thanks @DolceMag for a great conversation about my journey to @thechosentv and what true success is to me. Read it here🔗 : https://t.co/lUhvXjxLoL

#Dolce #DolceMag #JonathanRoumie

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Thanks Pearlene for helping peeps recognize how to identify my REAL and ONLY X account! See image below! 🙏🏽♥️💪🏽

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Hosanna in the highest! Happy Palm Sunday!🌿🌿

As Christ enters Jerusalem and begins His journey to the Cross, I wanted to share a little BTS from our filming of the Triumphal Entry @thechosentv. 👀🎬

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

@thechosentv When the arts and Sacred Scripture meet, they can create unique ways for us to experience the reality of Holy Week.

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

🙌🏽@greglaurie

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Did you know? @JesusRevMovie is in select theaters for a few days once more!!

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

How is your Lent going so far??
#StayPrayedUp

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Thanks for having us guys! 🙏🏽💜💪🏽

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Impact is everything! A snippet of my convo w @frmikeschmitz on my(and Ascension’s😉) YouTube channel! It’s been a profound blessing to witness the power of storytelling and cinema on people’s spiritual lives, including my own! 🎬🙏🏽✝️🥰
Check out our full conversation 🔗:The Cost of Playing Jesus in The Chosen | Jonathan Roumie & Fr. Mike Schmitz - YouTube (https://t.co/dVoWAPLCu4)

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Wonderful convo with Fr. Mike Schmitz…Full convo link below!

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

Thanks Entertainment Weekly for this nice piece about my appeThe Viewn The View yesterday.
Revival is happening in our lifetime, thanks be to God. 📷📷📷

https://t.co/BuWdZ3vJbb

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

I’m consistently treated like gold when I get to visit the ladies of @TheView! Thank you for always
making me feel at home! 🙏🏽♥️

[Jonathan @JonathanRoumie]

The entire text below, of @Pontifex Pope Leo XIV's address to filmmakers, actors and executives at the Vatican earlier. What an amazing charge given to those of us working in the industry of cinema. I pray all who were in attendance will let these words sink deep into their bones and aspire to create work that examines the human condition in a way that creates community using light and hope, rather than darkness and despair.
Profoundly encouraging and inspiring...
Thank you, Pope Leo. 🙏🏽

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

Although cinema is now over a century old, it is still a young, dreamlike and somewhat restless art form. It will soon celebrate its 130th anniversary, counting from the first public screening by the Lumiere brothers in Paris on 28 December 1895. From the outset, cinema was as a play of light and shadow, designed to amuse and impress. However, these visual effects soon succeeded in conveying much deeper realities, eventually becoming an expression of the desire to contemplate and understand life, to recount its greatness and fragility and to portray the longing for infinity.

Dear friends, I am happy to greet and welcome you. I also express my gratitude for what cinema represents: a popular art in the noblest sense, intended for and accessible to all. It is wonderful to see that when the magic light of cinema illuminates the darkness, it simultaneously ignites the eyes of the soul. Indeed, cinema combines what appears to be mere entertainment with the narrative of the human person’s spiritual adventure. One of cinema’s most valuable contributions is helping audiences consider their own lives, look at the complexity of their experiences with new eyes and examine the world as if for the first time., In doing so, they rediscover a portion of the hope that is essential for humanity to live to the fullest. I find comfort in the thought that cinema is not just moving pictures; it sets hope in motion.

Entering a cinema is like crossing a threshold. In the darkness and silence, vision becomes sharper, the heart opens up, and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined. In reality, you know that your art form requires concentration. Through your productions, you connect with people who are looking for entertainment, as well as those who carry within their hearts a sense of restlessness and are looking for meaning, justice and beauty. We live in an age where digital screens are always on. There is a constant flow of information. However, cinema is much more than just a screen; it is an intersection of desires, memories and questions. It is a sensory journey in which light pierces the darkness and words meet silence. As the plot unfolds, our mind is educated, our imagination broadens, and even pain can find new meaning.

Cultural facilities, such as cinemas and theaters, are the beating hearts of our communities because they contribute to making them more human. If a city is alive, it is thanks in part to its cultural spaces. We must inhabit these spaces and build relationships within them, day after day. Nonetheless, cinemas are experiencing a troubling decline, with many being removed from cities and neighborhoods. More than a few people are saying that the art of cinema and the cinematic experience are in danger. I urge institutions not to give up but to cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value of this activity.

The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what “works,” but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is, above all, an invocation. When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console but challenges. It articulates the questions that dwell within us and sometimes even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express.

In this Jubilee Year, the Church invites us to journey towards hope. Your presence here from so many different countries, and your artistic work in particular, is a shining example. Like so many others who come to Rome from all over the world, you too are on a journey as pilgrims of the imagination, seekers of meaning, narrators of hope and heralds of humanity. Your journey is not measured in kilometers but in images, words, emotions, shared memories and collective desires. You navigate this pilgrimage into the mystery of human experience with a penetrating gaze that is capable of recognizing beauty even in the depths of pain, and of discerning hope in the tragedy of violence and war.

The Church esteems you for your work with light and time, with faces and landscapes, with words and silence. Pope Saint Paul VI once spoke to artists, saying: “If you are friends of genuine art, you are our friends,” recalling that “this world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair [Address of Pope Paul VI to Artists, 8 December 1965]. I wish to renew this friendship because cinema is a workshop of hope, a place where people can once again find themselves and their purpose.

Perhaps we could bear in mind the words of David W. Griffith, one of the great pioneers of the seventh art. He once said, “What the modern movie lacks is beauty, the beauty of the moving wind in the trees.” His reference to the wind cannot but remind us of a passage from John’s Gospel: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” [3:8]. In this regard, dear seasoned and novice filmmakers, I invite you to make cinema an art of the Spirit.

In the present era, there is a need for witnesses of hope, beauty and truth. You can fulfill this role through your artistic work. Good cinema and those who create and star in it have the power to recover the authenticity of imagery in order to safeguard and promote human dignity. Do not be afraid to confront the world’s wounds. Violence, poverty, exile, loneliness, addiction and forgotten wars are issues that need to be acknowledged and narrated. Good cinema does not exploit pain; it recognizes and explores it. This is what all the great directors have done. Giving voice to the complex, contradictory and sometimes dark feelings that dwell in the human heart is an act of love. Art must not shy away from the mystery of frailty; it must engage with it and know how to remain before it. Without being didactic, authentically artistic forms of cinema possess the capacity to educate the audience’s gaze.

In conclusion, filmmaking is a communal effort, a collective endeavor in which no one is self-sufficient. While everyone recognizes the skill of the director and the genius of the actors, a film would be impossible without the quiet dedication of hundreds of other professionals including assistants, runners, prop masters, electricians, sound engineers, equipment technicians, makeup artists, hairstylists, costume designers, location managers, casting directors, special effects technicians and producers. Every voice, every gesture and every skill contributes to a work that can only exist as a whole.

In an age of exaggerated and confrontational personalities, you demonstrate that creating a quality film requires dedication and talent. Thanks to the gifts and qualities of those whom you work alongside, everyone can make their unique charisma shine in a collaborative and fraternal atmosphere. May your cinema always be a meeting place and a home for those seeking meaning and a language of peace. May it never lose its capacity to amaze and even continue to offer us a glimpse, however small, of the mystery of God.