I had the pleasure of speaking with Roma Downey about the challenges and triumphs of The Bible. The 10 allotment mini series produced by Roma Downey and husband sign Burnett,aired March 3rd, on the History Channel and Lifetime, and with the final episode airing on March 31st,Easter Sunday. Below are additional questions and answers from my interview with Roma. Conversation with Roma Downey on The Bible By, Julie Ellerton Q. How did you accurately recreate the stories? Roma Downey: We had quite a team. We worked with scholars and theologians so that we could bring these stories to the screen in a way that would be accurate, and that would always be in the spirit of The Book. We also partnered with faith leaders all across the country from all denominations. And I assume one of the most exciting elements to this has been the unity of finding one voice. We had endorsements from the Catholic church,from Evangelicals, from Baptist, and Protestants. We consulted with Jewish scholars,we also had on the set a Jewish cantor who made sure we approached all of the praying and rituals, exercise of the Torah scrolls, or with accurate lovingly brought to the screen. Q. How did you find the suitable Jesus? Roma Downey: The power of prayer. We were about six weeks away and we still had not cast Jesus. We were a little bit anxious,to say the least. I sent out an email to every one I knew, through prayer groups, and church,community and schools, saying, or 'we're looking for Jesus. Please keep us in your prayers that we will find him' Because we knew it was the leading man,certainly for the moment half of the series and we wanted an actor that would bring qualities of strength and humility. Someone who could portray the lion and the lamb. And we found him in Portuguese actor Diogo Morgado. I knew that I would know him when I saw him and Diogo brings such fond kindness. He's a very conscious person and has a heart of worship and that was the important thing. I maintain to say all of our actors brought to the screen vibrancy and such great performances. We brought in a cast that was diverse, that was international. Our Jesus is Portuguese, or our King David is South African,our Moses is Irish. and our Sampson is English." Roma's thoughts on the score of Hans Zimmer and vocalist Lisa Gerrard- And I just maintain to say woven throughout the whole series is the most astounding score by Hans Zimmer. We had dreamed of having Hans create the music for the series. We are In particular great fans of his composition for the film Gladiator, a particular favorite of ours. And in that film he had worked with the vocalist Lisa Gerrard and that was our ideal scene. Once Hans was on board we said, or you know it would be so great if we can find a beautiful,haunting, female vocalist like Lisa Gerrard. And Hans said, or Why would we find somebody like Lisa Gerrard when we could win Lisa Gerrard. So he called her up and we got on the phone with her and once she knew of our heart on this,and knew what we hoped to do with this, she came on board. Really her voice is like grace in action. It's like something comes down from Heaven and moves out from her through her voice. It's extraordinary. The combination of Hans' score and Lisa's voice really links all of these episodes together. Because we wanted to tell the series as one story, and it's the connective thread of God's worship for humanity. God's worship for all of us,that even though we continually mess up and often you can see the repetition of the mistakes over and over again, but God never abandons us. And loves us so much that he sends His Son for us. Q. Your thoughts on the unique Pope? Roma Downey:I was delighted. Certainly the character of Pope Francis as it emerges in the press, or clearly is a man of the people. I assume it brings such hope to the church and much needed leadership,and time of renewal and regeneration. You know the last few weeks, where everyone really has been focused on all things faith, and for The Bible to do it's television debut into this time,feels divine. Q. Everything you and sign touch definitely turns to gold, what's the next project for the two of you, or you maintain to maintain something brewing? Roma Downey: Well my husband of course hasn't missed a beat on his other shows and The Voice is about to approach back on the air again. But,I want to just win through getting this out and then taking care that it gets out across the world the way that we hope it will. And then we also maintain a novel that just entered the best seller list, which is thrilling, and which is a companion novel to the series. We had such a satisfactory response from the theologians,saying 'these scripts are really great. Would you not consider putting them together and publishing them?' And rather than do that and create a piece that looked a little like a phone book we novelized the scripts. It's an easy read, very accessible read, and following the story as told in the series. Best hope it that people will be inspired by these projects and proceed back into reengaging with the bible again itself.
Source: cnn.com