Let's Write about actors who portray the role of Jesus

The Way
Jesus Walks Into a Deli echo report published in The New Yorker July 31, 2023.

Jonathan Roumie, who stars as Christ on “The Chosen,” a (SAG-AFTRA-approved: In other words, as of 08/07/2023, end of business day), this list includes productions that are signed to agreements within the scope of the strike order, but have signed Interim Agreements allowing them to resume.) TV series about the New Testament, charms some acolytes over pastrami sandwiches.  

Jonathan Roumie, the forty-nine-year-old actor who plays Jesus Christ in “The Chosen,” a popular crowdfunded TV series about the New Testament’s protagonist, ascended the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral for noon Mass. 

But, before he could make it through the sanctuary’s nine-ton bronze doors, he was spotted by fans. “We just want a picture with Jesus!” one woman said.

Roumie politely obliged. The fan, it turned out, was among the thousands of pilgrims who’d travelled to Texas a few summers ago to be extras in Season 2’s Sermon on the Mount episode.

“Oh, my heavens, my husband is going to just die,” she said, posing with Roumie.

“You have touched our hearts in ways they have never been touched before,” her friend added.

Roumie headed for the pews. The son of an Egyptian father and an Irish mother, he is olive-skinned and bearded, and his brown hair grazed the shoulders of his leather jacket. He searched his pockets for a hair tie. “I’m going to put it up in a ponytail,” he said. “It helps a bit.”

Born in Hell’s Kitchen*—God has a sense of humor 😇—and baptized Greek Orthodox, Roumie and his family began attending a Catholic church after moving to the suburbs. His faith deepened in May, 2018, following an incident that has become gospel to his fans. After two decades struggling in the industry (bit parts on “All My Children,” sitcoms, and video games), Roumie was broke. He fell to his knees in his tiny apartment, surrendered to God, and had a mystical experience. Unburdened, he spent his last twenty dollars on a big breakfast, and, when he got home, he found in his mailbox four unexpected checks. A few months later, he got a call from Dallas Jenkins, the director and co-writer of “The Chosen.”


Jenkins’s father, Jerry, is the co-author of the best-selling Rapture-pulp novels in the “Left Behind” series. Jenkins cites “Friday Night Lights,” “The Wire,” and “The West Wing” as inspirations for “The Chosen.” The show, which now has licensing deals with Netflix, Amazon, and Peacock, has been streamed more than five hundred million times. Earlier this month, when the series had to stop filming its fourth season because of the sag-aftra strike, fans launched a social-media prayer campaign to lobby for an exemption. (“Satan is working overtime to stop production of this show”; “Father . . . please change the hearts of those who have the authority, which You gave, to approve the exemption.”) The union allowed the series to resume production.

In St. Patrick’s, the ponytail gambit had failed. As the priest gave his concluding blessing, a small queue formed near where Roumie knelt. He gave the acolytes his own brief blessings, then set off on foot for Sarge’s Deli, in Murray Hill.

He ordered the Skyscraper Deluxe, essentially a cheeseburger topped with pastrami, but he asked for lettuce instead of a bun. After saying grace, he tackled the sandwich, relieved that his fellow-diners were leaving him be. “I never wanted to lose my anonymity,” he said. “God had other plans.”

Roumie is an introvert. He has to push himself to be available to fans (who often address him as Jesus), and to make eye contact while listening. He remembers how, back before he was famous, he once approached a celebrity who treated his admiration as a nuisance.

His efforts to be openhearted are a matter of faith as well: What would Jesus do? “Jesus is the only character who I would hope to stay in character as all the time,” he said. The Method meets theology. “But some people want a spiritual encounter, and that can be hard to live up to. I’m not Jesus.”

More than other actors that played the role of Jesus, like Robert Powell, Willem Dafoe, Jim Caviezel, or other actors who have worn the big sandals, Roumie channels the Saviour offscreen, as a Christian influencer. On a Catholic meditation app called Hallow, worshippers can offer a novena accompanied by his image, or pray using a rosary made by Ghirelli, an Italian jewelry brand that he partners with.

The idea of being typecast doesn’t bother him. He recently played a lead role in a bio-pic about the charismatic nineteen-seventies “hippie preacher” Lonnie Frisbee, called “Jesus Revolution.” In one scene, he says, “People tell me I’m trying to look like Jesus or something. I tell them, I can’t think of anybody else I’d rather look like.”

Roumie asked for the bill. The server grinned and said that someone had already paid it. “It’s like every step of the way I get these little reminders that He’s got my back,” he said. Outside, the couple who’d paid were waiting for a photo. ♦

Published in the print edition of the August 7, 2023, issue, with the headline “Role of a Lifetime.”

*Hell's Kitchen is a beloved New York City neighborhood with a little grit. Named for the notorious 19th century motorcycle gang, “Hell's Kitchen” was once a part of town where few New Yorkers thought to live. Its gritty reputation and far-west location kept it under the radar.