Aug. 29, 2021, column in the Amarillo Globe-News:
'I want to be part of it': How a Fritch couple became extras in a scene of 'The Chosen'
By Mike Haynes
Getting to
the site of the Sermon on the Mount and waiting for Jesus to declare his wisdom
wasn’t easy for Derrol and Debra. And then they heard only a phrase or two here
and there throughout a long, cold day. But they would do it again in a
heartbeat.
Derrol and Debra Wells weren’t in the crowd at the Sea of Galilee 2,000 years ago when the Messiah gave the world the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer and the Golden Rule. They live in Fritch, Texas, and drove to Midlothian, 30 miles southwest of Dallas, to be extras this Feb. 10 in the Sermon on the Mount scene of “The Chosen,” the Christian media phenomenon that people across the globe are watching.
It’s the first multi-season episodic drama about the life of Jesus, shown at no charge primarily through an app that connects to streaming devices but also on YouTube and on DVD. The show’s website says it’s “the largest crowd-funded media project of all time,” and after two eight-episode seasons, it continues through a “Pay It Forward” program in which donations fund each $10 million season. Creator and director Dallas Jenkins hopes to produce seven seasons watched by at least a billion people. So far, episodes have been viewed more than 250 million times.
Two years ago, Debra discovered a short Christmas film Jenkins had produced for his Chicago church. “You see so many Christian movies and TV shows that are just cheesy, and I just can’t bring myself to watch them,” she said. “They’re not good; they’re embarrassing. So I resisted.”
Jenkins, son of “Left Behind” bestselling author Jerry Jenkins, followed with Season 1 of a project that showed Jesus gathering his disciples – including Mary Magdalene and other women – from the point of view of those followers, “the chosen.”
Hooked on the series, Debra and Derrol “paid it forward” enough to qualify as extras in the Sermon on the Mount shoot. Episode 8 of Season 2 ended with Jesus appearing to the crowd; Season 3 is expected to begin with the actual sermon.
The Wellses had car trouble even before they passed Amarillo on their way to Midlothian. They rented a car and made it to Olton, where they picked up Bree Elam and her daughter, Lillie.
“Bree is Australian, and she’s not comfortable driving on the ‘correct’ side of the road,” Debra said. The Elams had been strangers before Debra saw Bree’s Facebook request for a ride to the sermon shoot. Now they’re good friends.
The shoot, in the middle of the pandemic, required “Chosen” producers to set up a massive operation that included busing 2,500 extras from a football stadium to the set at a 1,200-acre Salvation Army camp, herding them through metal detectors and doing COVID testing.
The Sermon on the Mount occurred as the 2021 “Texas Freeze” was beginning. But postponing the event wasn’t an option. The temperature got as low as 28. “The wind was about 30 miles an hour when we got there,” Derrol said. “I thought, ‘My goodness, what are we stepping into?’”
Everyone was dressed in biblical-era robes and sandals. “We’re stuck there, and we didn’t come prepared for that amount of cold,” Derrol said. “We had on sandals that were made out of wicker and no socks,” Debra said. “It soaked up all the wet in the grass, so we walked around in wet sandals all day in the freezing cold.”
The Wells’ costumes were designed by their daughter-in-law, Grace, who has a fashion design degree. Derrol had grown a bushy beard. They had to hide all modern jewelry and their glasses.
They were far back in the crowd. “If Jesus – Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus – was in the Galilee, we were in Judah. We were way down south,” Debra joked. She said they could see the main actors but had trouble hearing their lines.
“Of course, we weren’t wearing glasses, so we couldn’t see them real good either,” Derrol said.
But the crowd remained positive and benefited from Christian musicians – Kari Jobe, Cody Carnes, Phil Wickham and Michael J – performing before the shoot began. “They sang, ‘The Blessing’ over us,” Debra said. “And you talk about chilling; you just had cold chills – on top of cold chills.” She said the musicians didn’t escape the temperature. “I don’t know how they played,” she said. “Their fingers were blue.”
Shooting the scene was such a huge production that the filmmakers got extra footage and interviewed participants for a 45-minute documentary called “Journey to the Sermon on the Mount” that was live-streamed last Sunday. Comments from extras – who came from as far as New York and Puerto Rico – indicated how meaningful “The Chosen” is in their lives.
Shooting the Feeding of the 5,000 is being planned now. “It’s going to be awesome,” Debra said. “I want to be there.”
But she made a point about the series. “’The Chosen’ is not the Bible,” she said. “It’s based on the Bible. But it’s really the backstories of the followers of Jesus, and the stories are based on plausible situations. Don’t watch it thinking you’re going to get exactly what the Bible says.”
As director Jenkins emphasizes, “The Chosen” continually leads viewers to scripture.
“When I first heard about it, I didn’t know what kind of impact it would have,” Derrol said. “I thought, ‘Well, they’re just making a little video.’ Then the further it went, I saw how it was reaching out to a vast amount of people in a lot of different countries, and people are being saved. Anything we can do for people to be saved through Christ is what we want to be part of.”
“The Bible basically says that toward the end of things as we know it now, the Word of God is going to go out all over the world,” Debra said. “And with all of my heart, I believe this is part of it. And I want to be part of it. It’s important. It’s life and death for people. I think it’s one of the most important media projects that’s ever been undertaken.”
Derrol and Debra Wells weren’t in the crowd at the Sea of Galilee 2,000 years ago when the Messiah gave the world the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer and the Golden Rule. They live in Fritch, Texas, and drove to Midlothian, 30 miles southwest of Dallas, to be extras this Feb. 10 in the Sermon on the Mount scene of “The Chosen,” the Christian media phenomenon that people across the globe are watching.
It’s the first multi-season episodic drama about the life of Jesus, shown at no charge primarily through an app that connects to streaming devices but also on YouTube and on DVD. The show’s website says it’s “the largest crowd-funded media project of all time,” and after two eight-episode seasons, it continues through a “Pay It Forward” program in which donations fund each $10 million season. Creator and director Dallas Jenkins hopes to produce seven seasons watched by at least a billion people. So far, episodes have been viewed more than 250 million times.
Two years ago, Debra discovered a short Christmas film Jenkins had produced for his Chicago church. “You see so many Christian movies and TV shows that are just cheesy, and I just can’t bring myself to watch them,” she said. “They’re not good; they’re embarrassing. So I resisted.”
Jenkins, son of “Left Behind” bestselling author Jerry Jenkins, followed with Season 1 of a project that showed Jesus gathering his disciples – including Mary Magdalene and other women – from the point of view of those followers, “the chosen.”
Hooked on the series, Debra and Derrol “paid it forward” enough to qualify as extras in the Sermon on the Mount shoot. Episode 8 of Season 2 ended with Jesus appearing to the crowd; Season 3 is expected to begin with the actual sermon.
The Wellses had car trouble even before they passed Amarillo on their way to Midlothian. They rented a car and made it to Olton, where they picked up Bree Elam and her daughter, Lillie.
“Bree is Australian, and she’s not comfortable driving on the ‘correct’ side of the road,” Debra said. The Elams had been strangers before Debra saw Bree’s Facebook request for a ride to the sermon shoot. Now they’re good friends.
The shoot, in the middle of the pandemic, required “Chosen” producers to set up a massive operation that included busing 2,500 extras from a football stadium to the set at a 1,200-acre Salvation Army camp, herding them through metal detectors and doing COVID testing.
The Sermon on the Mount occurred as the 2021 “Texas Freeze” was beginning. But postponing the event wasn’t an option. The temperature got as low as 28. “The wind was about 30 miles an hour when we got there,” Derrol said. “I thought, ‘My goodness, what are we stepping into?’”
Everyone was dressed in biblical-era robes and sandals. “We’re stuck there, and we didn’t come prepared for that amount of cold,” Derrol said. “We had on sandals that were made out of wicker and no socks,” Debra said. “It soaked up all the wet in the grass, so we walked around in wet sandals all day in the freezing cold.”
The Wells’ costumes were designed by their daughter-in-law, Grace, who has a fashion design degree. Derrol had grown a bushy beard. They had to hide all modern jewelry and their glasses.
They were far back in the crowd. “If Jesus – Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus – was in the Galilee, we were in Judah. We were way down south,” Debra joked. She said they could see the main actors but had trouble hearing their lines.
“Of course, we weren’t wearing glasses, so we couldn’t see them real good either,” Derrol said.
But the crowd remained positive and benefited from Christian musicians – Kari Jobe, Cody Carnes, Phil Wickham and Michael J – performing before the shoot began. “They sang, ‘The Blessing’ over us,” Debra said. “And you talk about chilling; you just had cold chills – on top of cold chills.” She said the musicians didn’t escape the temperature. “I don’t know how they played,” she said. “Their fingers were blue.”
Shooting the scene was such a huge production that the filmmakers got extra footage and interviewed participants for a 45-minute documentary called “Journey to the Sermon on the Mount” that was live-streamed last Sunday. Comments from extras – who came from as far as New York and Puerto Rico – indicated how meaningful “The Chosen” is in their lives.
Shooting the Feeding of the 5,000 is being planned now. “It’s going to be awesome,” Debra said. “I want to be there.”
But she made a point about the series. “’The Chosen’ is not the Bible,” she said. “It’s based on the Bible. But it’s really the backstories of the followers of Jesus, and the stories are based on plausible situations. Don’t watch it thinking you’re going to get exactly what the Bible says.”
As director Jenkins emphasizes, “The Chosen” continually leads viewers to scripture.
“When I first heard about it, I didn’t know what kind of impact it would have,” Derrol said. “I thought, ‘Well, they’re just making a little video.’ Then the further it went, I saw how it was reaching out to a vast amount of people in a lot of different countries, and people are being saved. Anything we can do for people to be saved through Christ is what we want to be part of.”
“The Bible basically says that toward the end of things as we know it now, the Word of God is going to go out all over the world,” Debra said. “And with all of my heart, I believe this is part of it. And I want to be part of it. It’s important. It’s life and death for people. I think it’s one of the most important media projects that’s ever been undertaken.”
Mike Haynes taught journalism at Amarillo College from 1991 to 2016 and has written for the Faith section since 1997. He can be reached at haynescolumn@gmail.com.
