“We do it ‘The Chosen’ way, which is we take stories that are famous… maybe they have been portrayed in stained-glass windows or as paintings in the case of the Last Supper, one of the most famous paintings of all time … and we’re going to reveal the humanity of it,” he told CNA during a press junket in Dallas on March 19.
“At the beginning of the Last Supper, it was 13 brothers who were very, very close to each other and who loved each other deeply being told by one of them ‘I’m not going to be with you much longer’ and saying some extraordinarily important things that they don’t quite understand and so they’re trying to make sense of it,” Jenkins said.
“So the humanization of a story that actually was human but that we don’t often look at it that way is an important part of how we portrayed it and one that, almost because of the fame of this part of the story, the fame of the Last Supper, it’s easy to distance yourself from it emotionally. And so, I think we’re trying to bring you back into what it would’ve been like to be in that room.”
One of the disciples who begins to understand what Jesus is telling them in Season 5 is John. Actor George Xanthis, who portrays John the Apostle, told CNA how he has seen his character go from “thunder to love” and how viewers are “following him on this journey” from “Son of Thunder,” as Jesus jokingly calls John and his brother James, to becoming “the beloved disciple.”
Xanthis shared that at the beginning of Season 5, John is “ready to listen” but “he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be listening for.”
He added that while Mary Magaldene catches the “bug” of understanding what Jesus is telling them in Season 4, “what Season 5 shows is John catches that bug and he catches it off Mary, which is a lovely moment because it’s a foreshadowing of where they’re both going to end up. So, this is kind of John beginning to have that insider’s ear.”
“I would say that he’s starting to pay attention and he’s sticking very, very close to Jesus as he does,” he said.
The actor pointed out how Jenkins frequently reminded the cast that while they may personally know what happens in the end, at the time, the disciples didn’t know how things were going to end.
Raised in a Greek Orthodox family knowing the Gospels, Xanthis said he had to “wrestle with that — because I knew what was happening, [so] I’m like, ‘How could the disciples not see this?’”
“So, even as John is beginning to catch on to it, it’s also that he doesn’t believe that it’s going to happen at the end of the week,” he added.
