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1:21
I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
1:26
All right guys, you got a special guest on the podcast today. His name is Paul Seerstad,
1:30
so he's a director, writer, showrunner, and executive producer of the new angel studio series
1:34
called Testament. So I actually want to read the series synopsis to you here. The book of Acts
1:39
explosively reimagined in an alternate modern era. A resurrection sparks a movement that turns
1:44
the world upside down, spreading hope amid chaos. As the followers risk everything to preach the
1:49
good news, the tempo races to silence them before the oppressive, imperium regime retaliates.
1:54
The public miracles, unburied secrets, and fractured loyalties force both sides to confront
1:59
the true cause of their choices. And so in this particular interview, we certainly talk about
2:03
the series and we talk about everything there. But we get into, okay, he was actually a trained
2:08
actor. So basically think of the London equivalent of Juilliard right here in America. That's where
2:12
he trained as an actor. And so we talked about, okay, at what point did you realize you didn't
2:17
want to be a storyteller in front of the camera, but you wanted to be a storyteller
2:20
on the other side of the camera, okay? And so how do you, you know, go from doing a short film to
2:25
doing a feature film to doing a series, what it's like working with angel? But then when we get
2:29
into a series like this, obviously, I just read the synopsis. This is not like a series that said
2:35
in first century, Jerusalem or Galilee or any of these types of areas. And so it's not going to
2:41
have the same feel as something like the chosen, which is trying to be like to the date that it's
2:45
representing. This again is kind of reimagined. So as we talked about in the interview, it's kind
2:49
of a post dystopian version of the book of Acts. And so we didn't really get into any spoilers,
2:55
but we just talked about, you know, how difficult it is to kind of write something like that. Like,
2:59
how do you approach something where you're literally like reimagining or stretching the
3:04
text and all that? And he had a very interesting answer to that. But also, how do you cast something
3:08
like this? Because you've got, you know, Saul of Tarsus, you've got Stephen, you've got Peter,
3:14
you've got Mary Magdalene, you've got Camilleol, you've got all these other different people.
3:18
And I think it's very, very important to listen to his answer on that, because I thought it was just
3:23
great, because again, this is not a guy in an organization that has all this book who's a money
3:28
and so they can get whatever actor or whatever actress they want to sign on for this project.
3:32
So in a lot of ways, they're having to find diamonds in the rough. And the guy that plays Saul in the
3:37
series is just spectacular. And the way that he found Saul, I thought was a very, very interesting
3:42
story. And then we talk about what is going to be the future of the series and kind of where
3:46
this will all go. So guys, very, very interesting interview, so I'm not going to keep in front of
3:49
you any longer. So without further ado, let's get into it. Paul Sirstad, welcome to
3:54
Endaunted Life of Man's podcast. Great to be here. Thanks for having me, man.
3:58
Man, I've been nervous all week about the last name, because I was like, I was trying it out
4:02
all the different ways in my head because it's like, you sound British, but you're not British,
4:07
but you're kind of British by like osmosis or something like that. So where does the last name
4:12
come from? Where do you come from? Well, the last name's Norwegian. So my father's Norwegian.
4:17
And actually, to be honest, the correct pronunciation is like Sustar, but no one can say that. No one.
4:23
Wait, say it again. I'm going to give it a go. Say it again. Sustar. Sustar.
4:28
I mean, it's not bad. It's not bad. But it's not good either. Yeah. Okay. We can just
4:33
will move past it. We'll move past it. Yeah. So, so we go for Sirstad, because, yeah, my dad married
4:39
an English woman. So I'm half English, half Norwegian, but I was born in Spain, raised in Spain,
4:44
then I lived in Dubai for about five years, and then I did the odd choice of moving to England,
4:50
you know, hot, hot cold. No, you know, not. Yeah, it's weird. You're basically sick all the time,
4:55
but like the accent's kind of weird, because if you're raised in Spain and you've got a couple of
5:00
different accents in the household, you would have, I would have expected a different sound. So,
5:05
did it just happen when you went to, you know, I went to school in London that you just kind of
5:08
picked up the accent? How'd that happen? Well, I trained as a, I trained as an actor for three
5:13
years at drama school, and they kind of beat, beat it into you that, you know, what's called the
5:18
receive pronunciation, Queen's English type of talking. But when I came to England for the first
5:23
time, everyone thought I was American, because I had an international accent from Dubai. And then
5:29
I had very much like a much more of a Northern accent when I was in up in England, like up in
5:33
Derby, and then I moved down to London, and it suddenly was kicked out of me. It's weird. Too many
5:38
accents, once more. You know, as you were saying that, I was trying to remember the name of the
5:43
actor. I'm just looking it up. The guy who played Jack's Teller and Sons of Anarchy, Charlie Hunnam.
5:50
Okay. So I remember Charlie Hunnam, who's British guy, right? I loved him in Green Street,
5:56
Hooligans, even though no one's really seen that movie. He did that Jack's Teller, you know,
6:02
American biker accent thing for so long, that he lost his natural British accent. And then he
6:09
was doing roles that required kind of the King's English. And he had to go to like a speech coach
6:14
to learn how to talk the way he had talked his entire life is crazy. It is weird. It does change
6:20
quite, especially if you've moved around a lot, your accent does change with who you're who you're
6:24
around. It's it's a weird one. Yeah, that's how it goes. I mean, here in the American South, you just
6:28
start dropping off the G's on your ING words. You say things like fixing to, which is like, hey,
6:34
what are you about to do? Well, I'm fixing to go to the store, right? You just kind of mush
6:38
words together. It's just kind of how it goes. But you mentioned it there, you went to drama school,
6:42
so Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London, as far as I can tell.
6:48
So give me an idea of drama school because my experience with drama is the ninth grade play
6:55
that I did that I can't even remember. But you know, you had to project and you had to, you know,
6:59
kind of command the audience and do all the different things. I'm assuming it was a little bit different
7:03
for you. So what made the decision for you to go that round? What was school like?
7:07
Yeah, I guess. I mean, I think the American equivalent would be like Juilliard or
7:12
all things like that. So they've got those big classes. I guess English, English training is a
7:20
little bit different. You kind of do your three years. And then your training stops, then it's all
7:24
about the jobs whereas American in terms of actors is a continual training process. At least that's
7:30
my understanding. Yeah. So yeah, it is a lot more that it's quite brutal. They basically break you
7:37
apart for a whole year, just taking away everything that you thought you know. And then, and then
7:43
attempting at least, they're very best to put you back together. So you end up as a, as quite a hot
7:48
mess by the end of it. But really, they just they, I mean, we had like a Serbian acting tutor
7:55
who was just only cared about if you were telling the truth. Like as in, as an actor, if you could
8:01
lock into the truth and she should go to the window be like, I'm jumping out the window now,
8:04
I'm not believing a thing, you're saying like, no, no, no, no. So yeah, it's quite, it's a brutal
8:10
process. But it's all about, yeah, finding, finding techniques and how to do things, but
8:16
essentially finding truth. And that, that was a big, big part of it.
8:20
Well, and I think any more, and this is true for, for acting, for podcasts, there's a reason,
8:26
so I've said this on the show before, I do not give my questions to the person I'm interviewing
8:31
before I interview them. That's one of my hard and fast, non-negotiable rules. Because if you
8:36
know what I'm going to ask you, not only does it like, you know, attach me to those questions
8:40
and not allow me to kind of weave in and out of whatever I think would be interesting,
8:44
but your answers are going to come off almost too snappy, like too precise. And it's just going
8:50
to smack of inauthenticity and a modern audience, especially an experienced podcast audience or,
8:56
or series audience or movie audience, they're going to be like, ah, I don't really believe that.
9:00
I don't believe that you believe that, which makes me want to believe it less. But I want to go back
9:05
even one more set, Paul, why even go to acting school? Like, was this just something that you had
9:10
some acumen for or you had an appetite for? Because I mean, as far as I understand it with
9:15
Juilliard, you don't just apply and get to go to Juilliard. You have to show some extreme promise,
9:20
whether that's in an instrument you're playing or acting or singing or something like that.
9:24
Yeah, I mean, I guess when I was, so when I was, I think my having a first, I grew up very alone
9:31
in the, in the mountains of Spain. So I had me in my imagination, you know, always asking my,
9:37
my mom or dad to like fix me up like a night costume and just running around. So I think I,
9:42
I was pretty set up to be this, you know, well, imaginary friends continue for life, don't they?
9:50
So it, it, it became, you know, that more and more when I moved to Dubai, I started doing pantomimes
9:56
and just started to enjoy it. When I came to England, I started auditioning for like theater
10:01
schools and just ended up being quite, yeah, people seemed to like what I was doing. I enjoyed
10:07
it a lot. And then yeah, you're right, auditioning for drama school is a, is a tough process. I think,
10:11
you know, there's, it's like 1% of people get accepted. So it was, it was a tough process, but,
10:17
but definitely fun. Yeah, I think I just, I, there was a point that I was like, I just want to tell
10:23
stories that that was, that was kind of the, the heart of it all. And acting was the way I could see,
10:28
see the first way. And at least, of course, it changed later. Well, see, Paul, you're helping me
10:33
prove my point that you don't stick to the questions you're planning on asking because
10:37
we've got about 800 episodes out there for people. We have interviewed literally hundreds of different
10:42
interesting people, but I've never had a mime on this show. And so we're going to take a hard
10:46
left turn. We're going to talk about my Marie or whatever it's called or something like that.
10:51
Handpantomime, not mime. Was that the same thing? No. It's probably a very English thing, isn't it?
11:00
It's, it's something you do at Christmas. And it's a very over the top kids show where these,
11:08
you know, Jack and the Beanstalk Cinderella, there's these big like things. And it's all very
11:13
over the top acting. It's a, it's a family style show. Okay. Often, often celebrities will come and
11:20
do like the villain role. Yeah, of course. That's a really weird thing. Yeah. I'm really glad you
11:26
interrupted me because I was going to have you teach me how to pretend like I was stuck in a box
11:31
or like hold my shelf off something like that. Yeah, that wasn't bad, right? And I haven't even
11:36
practiced, but I got to go downstairs for something real quick. This is getting terrible. This is
11:41
going into the world of dad joker. Okay, we're going to kind of get out of that. We're going to come
11:45
right back in. Okay, so you're at, you're at school, you're studying to be an actor. But you know,
11:51
the sense I give from the work that we're going to be talking about the stuff you're doing with
11:55
Angel, like did you grow up in a Christian household? Is your is faith something like kind of like a
12:00
center point of your life? Because you know, when you hear people talk about what's going on to the
12:04
UK and in London, you know, it's kind of described as like a post Christian culture. And so anything
12:10
that's especially in the world of art that has some sort of Christian foundation, it's automatically
12:15
kind of dismissed or diminished. So what was that like for you? Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I was lucky
12:21
enough really to have two parents who are Christian. They found God, I think only a few years before
12:29
they had me, which is, you know, awesome. But I would say that I probably, especially my teens,
12:37
I saw, I saw Christianity more of as an intellectual exercise. I liked debating, I liked, you know,
12:43
the existence of God really, you know, all of those early things that maybe people get lost in.
12:50
But I wouldn't say I had any sort of, or at least a very minor relationship with Jesus.
12:57
I wasn't following him. And so it was actually whilst I was at drama school,
13:02
that a girl there called Faith found out that I was a so-and-so Christian. And she was like,
13:10
so why do you swear so much? What you're reading in your Bible. And I was like,
13:14
because I bleep want to and she reads the Bible. And she kept on challenging me. She started calling
13:21
me her Bible buddy. She invited me to there was a Hillsong in London that I went to. And I responded
13:27
and they gave out these Bibles of people who responded. But it was a New Testament in a magazine
13:33
format, and they'd reordered it, which sounds really strange. So it started with the Book of Romans.
13:39
And people might go, "Oh, that's not right." But I'm so glad they did, because that's the first
13:46
book I read properly, you know, as a 19-year-old. And man, what grace is and how Paul writes that,
13:55
let it transform my life. I really did a U-turn with obviously a few attempts to go back. But
14:03
it changed, of course, my life. And I'm very, very glad to say as well that that young woman is
14:09
now my wife, Faith. Okay. Fantastic. But double bonus, God and a wife.
14:15
Hey, those are two very hard boxes to check. And you checked them all at the same time. So that's
14:20
fantastic. Well, I will say this as well. So you talk about Romans, you know, I've heard my buddy
14:26
Matt Chandler, he refers to the Book of Romans as Mount Rushmore. And so you don't approach Mount
14:32
Rushmore with with no regard for the journey, with no regard for the destination. And you can
14:39
spend in my audience will be very well aware of this here in the future. You can spend a lot of time
14:46
on averse. Okay. So just the first verse, it says, Paul, Paul's okay, you got a Paul there. Who's
14:52
Paul? Who was he? Right. And that kind of goes into your story. Well, we're going to be talking
14:56
about here a little bit. And then it's like, you know, serving of Jesus Christ. What do you mean by
14:59
servant? Actually, it's the Greek word do loss, which means bond server, which means a slave,
15:03
which means there's a purchase there. Okay, well, that's going to take me a week to unpack. And so
15:08
it's like, you could spend hours in verse one one of a 16 chapter, you know, the book of the Bible.
15:16
And so for you, I guess, so do you do you still live in the UK now? Yeah, yeah, I'm in London.
15:21
Okay, so you know, I've talked to Justin Breyer. He's been on the show four or five times. I've
15:25
debated on his show before. And so he's, he's done a lot of debates with, you know, atheists and
15:30
Christians. And he's, you know, he's very British in his presentation. And he's very polite. And he's
15:36
he's all those things, but he's also a Christian. And aside from a recent study that found that,
15:41
you know, young men in the UK are turning to traditional forms of Christianity. So the Catholic
15:47
church, Catholic or Latin mass Orthodox, like those types of things from where you sit on the ground.
15:54
What is it like being a professed Christian in England? Because I live in Oklahoma. So if the,
16:00
if we are the Bible belt, we are the belt buckle of the Bible belt here in Oklahoma,
16:04
my joke is, is I could trip and fall and land on five or six churches, you know, as I'm trying
16:09
to regather my balance. But, but for you and for your wife, what is it like living out your faith
16:14
in a culture in a country that maybe isn't too keen on it? Yeah, so actually, I would probably go
16:20
back a little bit. So I've got a mentor and dear friend Hugh Osgood, who's held some high,
16:27
high kind of church positions in the, in the free church sector. So that's free churches,
16:31
just anyone who's not Catholic and anyone who's not Church of England in the UK.
16:35
And I think back in, was it back in the 70s or 80s? He did a prayer
16:40
against what's called nominalism, nominalism in the UK. Because I think the danger with
16:49
especially, it's like here, I assume it's like that probably in the States as well,
16:55
is that Christian becomes a term of identity rather than of service, of following Jesus.
17:03
And so I think strangely his prayer came true. There's been a death of nominalism in, in the UK.
17:11
And people might see that as a negative and, and personally, I see that as a huge positive,
17:15
because then you, you know, you know, you know, what the real numbers are, you know,
17:20
what the weather fight actually is. It's not this murky water of, oh, I'm born in the UK,
17:25
so I'm a Christian, which makes no sense anyway. So there's, there's, there's almost like a, a
17:32
buy-in that has to happen. Obviously our, our, for me and my wife, our experience is a little
17:38
different, because we, we work in the arts, we work in the entertainment industry. And we've
17:43
worked in secular and, and in Christian circles. And I think actually, truthfully in the arts,
17:50
there's been a lot of damage done to the arts for, and for the people in the arts, from a,
17:56
from Christians, or from Christianity. And so a lot of the time we find ourselves just doing a lot
18:03
of healing work of actually, that they, people come in with such a mind of going, oh, there's,
18:09
there's an immediate dislike, or there's an immediate dismissal of who I am because of,
18:15
because I'm not a Christian, or because I have this way of life, or that way of life. And the,
18:21
I've had conversations, people have found out that I'm a Christian and gone, hold on, you don't
18:25
hate me. And I'm like, no, of course not. Why, why would I hate you? So past few years, really,
18:32
it's been a, it's been a, we've found that it's been a healing journey in the entertainment industry
18:38
for, for Christians. As in, that's our, almost been our ministry role.
18:43
Because people don't see that side of, of Christians a lot, especially in the,
18:49
the loud meat, because especially meat, you know, it always shows the awful side of things. And
18:55
that's always, you know, such a tiny percentage, which is such a shame. So yeah, but in terms of
19:02
freedoms and everything, yeah, there's, there's all the religious freedoms that we could want,
19:07
we can shout about Jesus as loud as we want from the rooftops or from the streets.
19:12
So it's still a very privileged place to be in, in a, in a faith setting, for sure.
19:19
Hey guys, real quick, very early on in undaunted life, I knew I wanted to partner with a meat
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21:16
Now, do you see that remaining that way? Because I'm reminded I just had Roger air on recently,
21:21
he has a documentary called live not by lies also on Angel. And there was the young lady from UK
21:28
March for life that was arrested for silently praying outside of an abortion facility. And she
21:33
wasn't in the zone that they've created the buffer zone and all that. And so this is a Christian
21:38
silently praying for these children that are being murdered inside of this facility. And she
21:43
was arrested for that. And so I agree with you, when you see one thing that happens and in one
21:48
particular place, and you don't really understand the UK, right, as being these very divergent
21:53
areas, right? I mean, if you're from Liverpool, and if you're from Manchester, like, this is
21:57
kind of in the same area, but you're not really having the same type of upbringing, right? And so
22:02
do you see it devolving? Because when you when you see the king and some of the things that he says,
22:07
and it's like, these things are nonsense. They don't come from a biblical worldview.
22:11
They smack of leftism, not any type of connection to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
22:17
Or is this just something that's kind of been created in the media, in your estimation?
22:23
Yeah, I think it's easy to draw out, you know, in terms of political, politically, sorry,
22:33
any story that you want to left or right, it is quite easy to frame anything you want for whatever
22:39
audience you're talking to. Like, for me, on a personal level, I get a little bit tired of the
22:47
left versus right. It kind of in the insinuation that the kingdom lies in one of those. And I'm
22:52
like, no, the kingdom is the kingdom. The kingdom has a king, not not an administration. Like, it is
22:58
a, it is a theocracy of goodness and grace. And so I see, for me, it's much more of a, you know,
23:08
that and then we're getting into like, you know, if people talk about Christian nation and things
23:12
like that, which of course is, is a whole different topic and much smarter people than me should
23:19
talk about that. Yeah, I think that the church potentially, and by the church, I do mean the
23:28
people. Often we can put things so much onto the big places in terms of, yeah, you mentioned the
23:36
king, for instance, but I'm never, I doubt I'm ever going to meet the king. But I will meet
23:42
the people in my circles. And I think we can so often point at going, hey, things should be
23:47
happening up there and neglect the things that we can be doing in our concentric circles. And
23:53
for me, as I believe that I'm like, this is where our focus should be, our own circles,
23:58
our own things. And then we'll see change, because that's how the early church did it. They didn't,
24:04
they didn't immediately go for, okay, take me to, take me to Caesar. Paul did that eventually,
24:10
but my goodness, he spent a lot of time doing, you know, small ministry, which grew and grew and
24:16
grew and grew and grew. So yeah, I do wish there was a bit more looking inward in terms of what
24:25
can we be doing right now, right here in, in my left and right with the Bible talks about our
24:30
neighbors so much. And yeah, sure, the emperor gets a few mentions, but not that many.
24:35
Well, Paul, I think it's helpful as well, because in this, well, this is indicative of a lot of
24:39
different countries, but in this country, people that are very, very, very concerned
24:43
about what Trump says or doesn't say or does or doesn't do, whether you like him or don't like
24:49
him, but they don't know the name of their mayor of the city they live in, right? They're local
24:53
magistrates. They don't, they wouldn't know the, the name of the sheriff to call in their county.
24:58
You know, if something were to go wrong. And then same thing on the Christian side of things,
25:03
when a major Christian falls, someone, a Christian with a huge platform, like a Robbie Zacharias
25:07
or a Robert Morris, you know, who doesn't have to answer for that? Me. Now I'm a commentator,
25:12
right in the, so faith culture, politics, space. And so I'm certainly going to talk about it.
25:17
I want to help Christians, especially Christian men, learn how to think critically about these
25:23
subject matters, but also leading to some sort of an action. But it's like, the same thing,
25:29
Christians are wrapped around the axle about whether or not Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan or
25:34
Jaco Willink or any of these guys are Christians or are going to become Christians or any of those
25:38
types of things. I was like, do you know how my life would change if Joe Rogan came out as a follower
25:42
of a Christ? Not at all. I'd mentioned it on the show and I would move on, right? Because I've got
25:47
a wife to love sacrificially as Christ of the church. I have children that I need to raise up
25:51
in the nurture and admonition of Lord. And Joe Rogan doesn't happen to be any one of those three
25:55
people. And so it's just not really my concern. You know what I mean? Yeah, 100%. Like, I'm, it's
26:01
probably this is definitely maybe more London, but you know, we don't know the names of our neighbors.
26:08
And that's, I don't know what it's like in the States. I guess it very, very dependent on the town
26:14
or city or state that you're living in. And so yeah, I just, I'd just love to see the move of
26:23
church kind of go. We live in, we live now in a globalized society, right? Which is different to
26:29
any other point in history. And I think, and that is a, I think that's a wonderful thing. And what
26:36
incredible thing that we can learn from the breadth of people all over the world, from different walks
26:41
of life, I think that's incredible. But it also can be the thing that we just chuck all of our
26:47
responsibility onto and all of our, our own, our own sense of mission onto. And I don't think
26:54
that's the call. All right, well, let's get out of the world, the world of Christian philosophy.
26:59
Let's get back to, to what we're dealing with here. So you're at school, you're learning to be a
27:04
fancy pants actor and all those different things. But at some point along the road, Paul, you decide,
27:09
yeah, front of camera is fine. But maybe I could be a better storyteller. I'm editorializing a
27:15
little bit here. Maybe I could be a better storyteller from behind the camera or at the desk with the
27:21
screenplay, which leads to what's happening behind the camera. So when and how did this transition
27:26
begin for you? Yeah, I was, it was, it was a God moment, to be honest. I was doing, I was doing a
27:32
play or a musical something. And I always had in my, in my mind as an actor, because by this point,
27:41
you know, I was, I was committed to follower of Jesus, which is great. But I thought, you know,
27:45
when I reached a certain level of success, especially with actors, actors get, you know,
27:50
platforms in terms of, you know, for their voice to be louder than, than many. And I was like,
27:56
Oh, great, when I reached that level of success, I'm going to use that platform to glorify God.
28:01
And I felt really strongly God impressed on my heart a question, which was, that's great.
28:07
But what are you going to do for me right now? That simple question changed the course of my life.
28:15
I was reading at the time as a guy called David Platt, who runs a church in Birmingham, Alabama,
28:21
who was, I think there was or is the president of the International Missions Board. He'd written
28:26
a book called radical about the Great Commission and, you know, all of our roles in that. So that
28:32
was kind of, you know, going in the back of my mind as well. I thought I'd become a youth pastor.
28:38
I thought I should go to Bible school. And this is at the time I was getting married and
28:43
faith my wife was like, no, come on, please. This is not, this is not what we thought.
28:49
And then, and then it kind of dawned on me, I was like, Oh, no, I should, I should be doing what I
28:55
plan to do, but much further down the line. I wanted to make films. I wanted to make shows that,
29:00
that would point people to Jesus. I just didn't have the resources to do it. But I thought, okay,
29:07
I'll, I'll try that now. And bit by bit, God has provided the way from doing, you know,
29:14
small, short films to a feature to then now a series in just such a, such a way that I'm now
29:22
able to trust him in a pretty scary way for other people, for sure. You know, when finances aren't
29:29
there, and you're like, yeah, it'll come and it does. It's a place to be. But yeah, so it's um,
29:35
yeah, bit of a bit of a God moment, I call it.
29:38
Okay. And so you kind of mentioned it there, getting to a series and that series is called
29:44
Testament. And so that's kind of the main reason why we're talking today, and we're going to get
29:48
into to all the different details of the series and everything. But I guess I'll combine a couple
29:54
of questions is where did the idea for a show come from? But then again, most people, my audience,
30:00
me included, we don't quite fully know, okay, so you have an idea. But then how does that idea
30:06
get off the ground? Because I tell people all time is like, you know, executions way better than
30:10
ideas. Because there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people that have notebooks filled up with
30:15
the ideas that have never been executed on. And no one wants to go to a movie where they talk
30:19
about a person that had a bunch of ideas that they never executed on, right? It's just kind of
30:22
like part of the thing. Yeah, how does it go from an idea to becoming like a thing thing?
30:28
Well, it starts small. And I think that's probably the thing that people never want to hear.
30:37
Because you have the idea for the for the huge thing, but not for, not for the beginnings.
30:44
There was a Bible verse that was spoken into as quite a lot of things, which is do not
30:47
despise the day of small beginnings. And that was spoken over as again and again and again and again.
30:53
So we started making, we did a bake sale at our church. It was me, my wife,
30:59
they, brother-in-law Kenneth, mother-in-law John, his wife, Pippa, we started doing spoken word
31:06
nights. Like it's a family endeavor. We just got together and went, all right, how can we make this
31:11
happen? We raised like, what's about $2,000 to make our first short film, which was a re-imagining
31:19
of a parable, the sewer. And then we made that, that got some attention from someone else going,
31:27
oh, I'd like to fund a second one, which is great. And that was relational. That was, you know, we,
31:32
we went out for dinner with someone, they heard about it, and they said, oh, great. And again,
31:38
at that point, we're not asking for, you know, $100,000. I think the second one was about $3,000.
31:43
And so we started making these short films
31:47
to reimagine parables. But then I did come to a realization of going, because especially here
31:55
in the UK, there aren't, there isn't much faith media coming out of here. I think there's probably
32:01
a whole host of reasons for that. But I thought, well, if we're honest, nobody really watches short
32:08
films. We all pretend we do, but we don't. And I was like, well, okay, I don't want to waste what
32:17
we've done. What can I do to make something a bit more comprehensive? So actually, I wrote
32:26
then a narrative that tied three short films that I'd wrote, one short film that my wife had
32:32
written, and then another short film that my friend had written, together into one feature film.
32:38
And that became the parables retold, this, this two hour movie that had a backdrop in the book
32:46
of acts, but it was about Dr. Luke finding out about the parables, and Jesus as a storyteller,
32:52
and him learning about that. And so yeah, we finished our first movie. Again, it was still
32:59
doing bake sales, still doing asks, we asked churches around if they could spare a thousand,
33:05
or if they could spare a few hundred. And we had a charity as well, come on, which was just
33:12
incredible. That's what I mean. It slowly started to snowball in a way that I couldn't predict.
33:18
But even the movie, the movie itself was like $30,000, $40,000, not including the short films.
33:25
We made that two hour movie, and that at the same time was because of the industry I'm in,
33:32
I'm paying close attention to stuff in the media that's new. Something that we don't get here in
33:37
the UK is, so for instance, I think a few years before that, the only Christian faith-based studio
33:48
that I really heard of was Pure Flix. And we didn't get it, as in, I don't mean as in didn't
33:56
understand it, it was geo-locked. All this faith content was geo-locked to only the states,
34:01
which was just, for me, as being not in the states, bizarre. And I'm like, I get there
34:10
are licenses, I get there are deals and things like that. But I'm like, why is no one thinking
34:15
ahead of this and going that we're entering a globalized world? And if we're wanting to get
34:20
the message of Jesus out further, surely we should be thinking global. And it was at that time that
34:25
I spotted a new studio called Angel, who at that time they had the chosen, and they were having
34:33
no geo-locks on it. It was out in all the world, anywhere in the world could watch it. They started
34:38
putting it out for free. So I was like, oh wow, this is very missional as well. So I'd heard about
34:46
them, I submitted the movie to their, what was then called the Jewry, it's now called the Guild.
34:52
And I also got invited to head over to, my first time in the states was a 24-hour round trip. I
35:00
went to, I think it was Nashville, I think, I can't remember. But I went there for 24 hours to
35:06
a picture-thon, and I pitched the movie to about 20 different distributors. Maybe that's an exaggeration,
35:14
maybe it was more like 10. I don't know, it felt like a lot. And everyone wanted the film. Everybody
35:21
wanted it. But then it passed the Jewry with Angel. And because of the no geo-locking, and I could
35:27
see the potential of where they might be going, I was like, well, this is the only one that really
35:31
makes sense for us, because it's hitting something wider than just the states. Obviously, the state's
35:38
still the largest market for faith-based content, but an emotional aspect that was important for me.
35:44
And so, yeah, they took the movie on, and then we decided, hey, well, why don't we do a series
35:53
that takes some of the elements that the movie had, which was, it was set in the background of the
35:59
book of Acts, like chapter 23 or something, I was like, well, it might be interesting to do
36:04
the whole book of Acts as a TV show. And so we discussed it, they thought it was a good idea,
36:11
and got to work.
36:14
Well, I love that you tell a story because
36:18
everybody wants the quick fix, right? We live in a culture where it's like, oh, you're fat,
36:24
so jam and eatle into your leg, and all of a sudden, six months later, you'll be less pounds,
36:28
you'll also look like a melted candle, but hey, you won't have to work out or change your diet or
36:32
anything like that. Hey, no one's supposed to say anything, we're supposed to congratulate you,
36:36
but I will say this as well. Same thing with this show, Paul, is like, I had no illusions
36:41
that one day this would become as big as it has and the opportunities that supported me.
36:46
I started recording in a closet in my house, right? I had my laptop here, I bought a $50 microphone
36:52
off Amazon, and I could literally sneak in the closet, I had just enough room to close it and
36:58
stand there and record this podcast, but I just dedicated myself from the beginning. I'm going to
37:03
work as unto the Lord, and if I never have more than a dozen listeners outside of my friend group,
37:10
who cares, right? This is cathartic for me, I feel like this is what I'm led to do. And you
37:14
talk about that snowball, my goodness, it just keeps snowballing and snowballing, and then you
37:19
start getting these returns, if you will, that are exponential in growth just because of how the
37:24
world works. And so you have a very similar experience. You're working with Angel, and we just love
37:30
working with Angel here on this end with the different folks. And so you've got this idea to
37:35
extrapolate this out to make a series about the book of Acts. Now, people in the audience
37:40
are automatically thinking about like, oh, so like the chosen, but after the ascension,
37:45
and now getting into the church age, and so it's going to be a bunch of Jewish looking actors
37:49
in a bunch of, you know, places covered in sand and dirt, and talking in, you know,
37:53
weird Middle Eastern ish, English accents, and then, you know, kind of going on from there. But
37:58
that is not at all the approach that you guys took. And so let's, I guess, start, we haven't even
38:02
said the name of it. The name of it is Testament. Okay. How did you get the name? And then this is
38:08
almost like the book of Acts meets like some dystopian novel. And you kind of wrap it all together
38:15
with a bunch of British people. And you know, you just kind of like, you know, go from there. So
38:20
how does all this start to where it's like, Hey, we're not just going to retail it like the like
38:24
straight from the pages of the Bible, we're going to reimagine it, if you will.
38:28
Yeah. So I mean, it started because of those, those parables. You know, we were reimagining them to
38:37
try and to try and pull out a timeless truth from them. Something that would resonate with audiences
38:45
that don't the perfect example is, you know, when I was doing youth ministry and stuff, I remember
38:51
talking to, to a kid about the Good Samaritan. And their takeaway was, yeah, because the story
39:00
is Samaritans are good. And I was like, ah, and I, and I understand how you would get there,
39:07
if you don't know any of the cultural context, historical context, one of that. But to do that,
39:13
you would have to learn about all the history and all that, you know, it is quite a lot for this,
39:18
you know, 13 year old to, to do right now to, to pull out a timeless truth. And so that's what
39:25
we were doing with parables, we were modernizing them, putting them in a setting that people could
39:29
recognize and see instantly. And so when we did the Book of Acts background, it was in that dystopian
39:37
world. And, and so yeah, we, we are setting the Book of Acts as a series in a world that looks
39:44
very much like our own. It looks like today with a few alterations. And that's because I don't think
39:51
you can do the story of the Book of Acts in the digital age. I don't think we talked about that
39:55
globalized economy and globalized world. That's not the world in which acts takes place, and especially
40:01
how messages are spread that there has to be a certain limitations for that story to move. So
40:06
it's an analog world with the Roman Empire called the Imperium, as we call them, in still in control.
40:14
But yeah, it's an aesthetic, it's an aesthetic layer of analogy. So yeah, people are in boots,
40:23
some are in t-shirts, shirts. We've got some interesting ministerial robes for our, our priests
40:30
and high priest. And really the aim of it is for us as an audience to be able to enter this world
40:38
and recognize ourselves. I think quite a lot of the time, you know, I get privileged to preach a lot.
40:44
And, and when I do, I'm always trying to bring people to the Bible and imagine themselves there,
40:51
imagine themselves as in the early church in those days what it might have been like.
40:55
And so this is kind of reverse engineering it and putting it almost as close to, I can, to audiences.
41:01
So they can see a world that they recognize and more easily connect to people that they
41:09
they might not do seeing them wearing tunics or sandals. And it pulls out, it pulls out a different
41:17
feel. However, and I think that this is what's been fun having released the show is people have
41:21
been a bit wary of going, oh, so you're, you're changing, you're changing the story of Scripture.
41:26
And that's what's really fun is we're not. It is, it is all the same, we're following the
41:31
scriptural account, we're following what happens, who is who, who's related to who, what, what this
41:36
world might have looked like with that aesthetic layer of difference. So yeah, it's, it's been
41:42
incredible to, to release. But yeah, it is a different, it's a different looking world. And
41:46
hopefully a world that people who aren't believers might enter more freely. They might go, Oh, call
41:53
that, as you mentioned, a dystopian looking world, like anything like the Hunger Games or something,
41:58
you enter a world with history and you just learn as you go. And that's the, that's the aim.
42:03
Well, I said dystopian. And as soon as I said, I wish I could have back, it's almost post dystopian
42:07
to where it's like, it's almost built in a way to where you can tell something has fallen,
42:13
there's a new regime, but there's still control, because in a dystopian environment,
42:18
you know, book of Eli with, you know, Denzel Washington, that that's not what this is. Okay,
42:22
like this is a post apocalyptic type of thing. And so it's almost like post dystopian. But I do
42:27
want to kind of key in on where you're talking about, you know, the reinterpretation or reimagining
42:32
or stretching of what we see in the Bible, because the critique I hear of the chosen for
42:37
people that are just, they just hate it. They don't want it. They say, Kyle, it's not biblical,
42:41
we shouldn't support it. And I'm like, okay, if you take the narratives we see in the information,
42:47
in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and cobble it together and try to create a storyline and a
42:53
narrative arc of some kind and take someone on a artistic journey, you're not going to get,
43:01
you know, when you when people are critical of movies, they're like, well,
43:05
this character just wasn't fully developed. And so you really wanted me to care about this
43:10
character, but you didn't give me any background, you didn't give me anything to attach to. And so
43:14
it's like, yes, do we have a a full line by line narrative accounting of what the disciples
43:21
and or the apostles and Jesus were saying on a certain road that they were walking from one
43:26
place and Galilee to another place? No, we don't. And so that's what Dallas Jenkins and his team
43:31
are coming together. What I tell people to do is to not get wrapped around the axle about what's
43:36
not there, but to be very wrapped around about the axle about what is there. Because if you start
43:41
changing core biblical doctrine or core Christian stories or softening things or lighting things up,
43:48
you know, I called Dallas and told them in season five of the chosen, they showed Jesus, you know,
43:53
turning over the tables and clearing the temple, it was incredible. Because it's the only time I've
43:59
seen that depicted where Jesus was [inaudible] off. And it was premeditated in the way they shot it
44:06
over a couple of episodes, you could see the premeditation, you could see the righteous anger,
44:11
you could see the indignation, you could see all those things. Because I've seen other times where
44:16
people are just like, Oh, you know, this wispy hair Danish looking Jesus guys like, Oh, I just,
44:21
I can't believe what you are doing in my father's house. And I can't believe I have to turn over
44:25
these tables. It's like, come on now, nobody would have ran out of the temple and a guy like that
44:30
acting that way. But I will say, that's got to create some consternation for you, Paul, when you're
44:36
taking a sacred text, which is exactly what the book of acts is. And you know, you're changing names
44:42
of things and you're implying things as opposed to straight up saying them. So how worrisome is that
44:47
for you? How much anxiety does it create? Because I'm anxious for you. And I'm not even working on the
44:51
show. Yeah, great, great questions. And in terms of changing names, interestingly, there's,
44:57
there's one name that we've chosen an older name of. Every other name is the same. So Jerusalem,
45:04
we've actually gone back historically to go for Salem, Salem, yeah, which is an even older name
45:10
for Jerusalem. You know, Melchizedek is from the order of Salem. Other than that, yeah, names are
45:17
the same. But you're, you're right, there are, and there are some great Bible adaptations. I can't
45:24
remember the name. Is it Luma? I can't remember it. But there's some that, you know, do literally
45:29
verse by verse, and you know, they're doing a visual representation. I think it's on the,
45:34
like the uversion app. So that stuff exists for people, which is awesome. I think the important
45:39
thing to remember is, is that this is not changing the Bible, because it is not the Bible.
45:47
You know, I'm not going to, you know, go and meditate over over a TV show. It might get me thinking,
45:54
but when I, so again, I get a, I get a preach sometimes. And one of my favorite semas that I did
46:00
was I told the story of a bed in a go, Meshach and Shadrach. Now, if you're familiar with that
46:07
story, that might have thrown you, because I just said three names in a different order than you've
46:11
normally heard. Yeah. And I did that. And I literally saw the whole congregation do this.
46:18
They'd lean forward and their eyes widened. Now, I didn't change anything about the story. I didn't
46:24
change anything about the content. I changed the order of a name, because I think as Christians,
46:28
we're so used to hearing stories. And I mean, I'm sure when you communicate, you can see when
46:34
people just switch off, because they know what you're going to say. And, and the beauty of the Bible
46:40
is that hermeneutical cycle is we read it, we are transformed. And then when we read it, we are
46:45
new again. So every time it should be a continual transformation of who we are, and growing deeper,
46:51
it's like the Bible's meditative literature, it's how it's written. And so what we're trying
46:57
to do with a show is present it in a way that makes people lean forward and reengage. Now,
47:03
whether you go, Oh, I wouldn't have done it like that, or, Oh, I thought this, or, Oh, I've never
47:06
thought of it like that, that's really awesome. I don't mind, because what I think is the win is,
47:12
I just got you to reengage with your Bible. Like, isn't that isn't that awesome? But there are some
47:17
stories you're right, like we tackle in episode four, we tackle the story, which I think is probably
47:22
the hardest one in the New Testament, which is the story of Ananias and Sephira. It is a,
47:28
it's just a such a difficult passage. And, you know, we approached that with so much prayer,
47:35
with so much thought. And I think the one thing that we've done, which I've not seen done before,
47:42
is the effect that that had on Peter, and what he might have felt, had literally seen two people,
47:51
you know, at different times, die in front of him because they lied in the presence of the Holy
47:57
Spirit. Like, that is such a, I've seen comments of people, you know, being like, I never knew
48:02
that was in the New Testament. That's really hard. And we're like, yeah, it is. It's meant to be
48:06
hard. It's meant to be difficult, but it's actually meant to show you the holiness of our God. You
48:11
know, people are going, you know, as you say, Danish, Jesus with his blonde hair and going,
48:16
oh, everything's great. Now Jesus is wholly righteous. And the fear of the Lord belongs as
48:23
much to him as it does to the Lord, you know, that they are, they are one. And so, yeah, we're always
48:32
imagining with, you know, the stories of how we get to these places, what's probable, what's possible,
48:39
what's improbable and trying to be led by that. But also because we're doing it in this alternate
48:44
modern day setting, we get, I probably we get a little bit more leniency, I guess, because it's,
48:51
you know, you watch it and you know, you're not in first century Jerusalem, like that's pretty clear
48:56
from the first image. But we get to ask the question, what might believers today, especially
49:04
with Mary's storyline, which what we do in the season, what might believers today be facing,
49:09
what might be on your street corner that you're not engaging with, what if the early church was
49:15
happening today, what might we have to deal with? And we are, we are Acts chapter 29, we are the
49:21
unwritten chapter, we are the continuation of, of God's church. And yeah, so it's always, it's
49:29
led with a lot of prayer and diligence, but I do as well accept the shows like The Chosen or House
49:35
of David or Testament, they're not going to be for everyone. And that's, that's okay. I think that's,
49:41
that's absolutely fine. But what's incredible is, and you can see the, the, these, the effect that
49:49
these shows are having on people is people are going to their Bibles, people are falling in love
49:55
with the Bible, with the ultimate author. And like, isn't that the goal? Like, we're not, we're not
50:03
asking, I don't think any of, of us, the showrunners of these are being like, Hey, come, come to us,
50:09
we're like, Hey, check this out. But the better version, the better version I'm guessing you have
50:13
at home. And it's the Bible. It's just not written like a novel. I just, you know, we, we can't assume
50:20
that it's written like Stephen King or Dan Brown would write a novel. It's, it's, it's ancient
50:26
Jewish literature. And it's different. One, and the thing that you mentioned about Testament
50:31
and the chosen and House of David and all that, I don't really know about House of David, but certainly
50:35
with, with Testament and the chosen, nobody working on that show is saying, Yeah, this is, this is
50:40
the scripture right now. That's what we're doing. Like, don't study your Bible. Watch season three
50:46
episode eight of the chosen, like nobody's nobody's saying that at all. And even when you watch House
50:51
of David, that I thought was spectacular, the very first image before every single episode is,
50:57
Hey, this is not a verse by verse rendering, or historical, you know, by the book thing,
51:03
we are creating some narrative arcs here to take you on a journey, right? And I don't see the people
51:09
from the House of David purportedly trying to get, get across some sort of a gospel message, but,
51:13
but who knows? But it feels like with all these things that are happening, the process of casting
51:20
has to be very stressful. And it's so important because gosh, can you imagine somebody playing
51:27
Jesus right now other than Jonathan Rumi? I mean, sorry, Jim Caviezel, you are on the
51:31
sideline, sir. Okay, it is Jonathan Rumi. And when you're thinking about, you know, Peter or Andrew,
51:38
like you're thinking about some of these these actors, and I mean, gosh, Mary Magdalene in that,
51:44
in that series is just spectacular. But in in your show, it's like, okay, Peter's is kind of like,
51:49
you know, bald white guy, then you got Mary Magdalene. It's a it's a young beautiful black gal.
51:54
Then you've got Gamaliel, who also was a guy that played in House of David, who was spectacular
51:59
in House of David, who's equally spectacular. And so you have all these different people.
52:04
And again, it's what your brain's expecting, like Shadrach, Meshachabednago, you know, changing the
52:09
order. But then you're like seeing these people like in street clothes, and you're kind of like
52:14
evaluating what they look like or what they talk like. But it's like, no, no, no, wait, wait,
52:17
that's Mary Magdalene. Oh, okay, that's that's Steven. Steven is like a, you know, a curly hair
52:23
English guy, right? And the and the guy you picked for Paul, I mean, my goodness, right?
52:28
Or Saul, right? Let's, you know, the guy is Saul Tarsus. Holy Moses, he's spectacular. Like he like,
52:34
it just it just fits. So what was the process like of casting? Because again, this isn't like
52:41
MGM or whatever may or not MGM, I don't know, like a major studio in America or something like
52:47
that that's got endless budget. So they can just pick out whatever actors and actresses they want.
52:52
You're getting folks that a lot of people would not recognize from any other works. Maybe this
52:57
is their big break. This is their first, you know, series they've done. How do you go about
53:01
picking the right people and making sure it's the right kind of person that adds to the whole,
53:05
you know, gumbo of the series? Yeah, great question. I think what you're absolutely
53:11
right in terms of like, you know, we don't have a huge studio with a massive budget, you know,
53:15
we have to raise the budget ourselves for this type of show. So it is, you know, our budget is
53:19
is like, I can't actually believe what we've got out of our budget is a bit ridiculous.
53:28
But yeah, this, this, what's great about that, and because Angel Studios works as a distribution,
53:33
as a distribution partner, and not with any creative control whatsoever, it means we can pick
53:39
who we want. We have the ultimate authority and say over our show. And as I said, you know, I
53:47
trained as an actor, my wife Faith's an actor, Kenneth, who is the other writer, my brother-in-law,
53:53
is an actor, we know acting. And so we just auditioned as many actors as we could in London.
54:01
London's got a great theatre scene. So a lot of these people are good theatre actors.
54:05
And we're just looking for the best person for the role. We're not thinking about
54:12
the marketing strategy. We're not thinking, you know, maybe that's not the best idea, but
54:19
our ultimate goal is to tell this story the best way we can. It's other people's goals to get the
54:23
show out because, you know, that's that's their job as distribution distributors. But we had, we
54:29
had intensive audition processes. Eben, who plays Saul, in fact, I'd seen him do some theatre work.
54:37
He played Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, which I think is one of the most boring Shakespeare roles
54:44
there is. It's truly truly like I've always hated that role. And I saw him do it at the National
54:50
Theatre with such ferocity. And I went, I've never been interested in this role before. You
54:56
managed to make that boring role. I like Shakespeare, but that was that's usually boring. He was
55:01
incredible. And then Kenneth met with him randomly at New Year's Eve party. He put us in touch. And
55:08
I said to him from the beginning, I know that you are either to play Saul or Stephen. I just don't
55:14
know who yet. And so we spent we spent months just just talking. He came to all the read-throughs
55:20
of early drafts, reading, you know, the different roles. And eventually, yeah, we landed on Saul.
55:27
And I'm so glad we did because I think I think I don't think anyone could be doing it the way
55:33
he's doing it. It's it's quite it's quite special what he's doing. Well, and when you said Stephen,
55:39
just in my head, that doesn't fit because one, maybe you help me a little bit. So Stephen, very
55:45
early on an episode one is kind of introduced as this wide eyed young dreamer. But and I don't
55:52
know if this was on purpose or what, but the wide eyed young dreamer with an eatable mother,
55:57
right? So if you're familiar with the eat of [inaudible] Rex and the all consuming mother and those
56:01
types of things, like, some people may see that, Oh, that's just the overbearing mother. No,
56:05
no, no, no, like I felt like it was way deeper than that. And this isn't just like, oh my,
56:10
because you can kind of see it there. It's like, Oh, my son, you just got excited. You got whipped
56:13
up. Come on home. And it's like, no, mom. And so you know, if the actor had been ferocious in that
56:20
moment when their mother, it would not have met the moment. So the actor who plays Stephen, it felt
56:25
like there was a softness, a boyishness to him. And then if you extrapolate that out to the story of
56:30
Stephen, it's the childlike faith that led to, you know, his story as you read through the book of
56:37
Acts. And so was that kind of like an intentional thing with the, like kind of the, the, the all
56:42
consuming mother being attached to Stephen, but Stephen kind of being this wide eyed optimist?
56:48
I think it's the first episode, yeah, introduced. So we, we, we introduced the whole story through
56:57
two people's eyes. We meet the apostles through Stephen, who's almost like the avatar for us as,
57:03
as a new audience, as a new, new believers, as new people coming in. And then Saul, who you
57:09
kind of meet the temple through. But I think because of where Stephen's journey will ultimately go,
57:14
it's important to place a heart somewhere, an external heart, because we don't know much about
57:22
Stephen, but what I know for 100% certainty is he had a mother and he had a father that I know.
57:31
And so writing in this, this mother allowed us to explore what what people around the world,
57:39
what happens to people around the world who decide to follow Jesus? You know, we are in a
57:45
privileged place in a lot of places in the West where the consequences for deciding to follow
57:51
Jesus aren't, aren't that, aren't that dire? I don't speak for everyone, of course, and, and
57:55
everyone's family, there will be exceptions. But there are, there are other places in the world where
58:00
Christianity is flourishing, but it is flourishing under, under huge, huge family breaks. You know,
58:07
Jesus talks about it's sword against mother and father, son, and like, it's real. And so for us,
58:13
I wanted to explore that in terms of this new believer who's coming to the faith,
58:17
and actually what that costs him, it costs him a relationship with his mother,
58:21
and what that'll do for her. And, you know, S Lizzie Hockley, who plays Esther and Charlie
58:27
Bevan, who plays Stephen, they have their own journey for the rest of the season, that they
58:32
continue to be in the show. And it is, without spoiling it, it is truly remarkable what those
58:41
two managed to do. It's, it's some of the most beautiful work, like we've, we've screened certain
58:45
episodes recently, and the whole season's now out. But yeah, it is, it is truly breathtaking.
58:53
Well, that's a hard part about talking about a series or a book or anything like that without
58:56
giving away any spoilers. But I don't think this really spoils anything. But there's a moment at
59:02
the end of the first episode where the actor that plays Stephen and the actor that plays Saul,
59:08
there's no dialogue, right? I literally just got chills just thinking about it, right? Just
59:13
thinking about this thing. Maybe it's cold in the room. But like, there's no dialogue at all,
59:17
but there's a knowing glance that shared between these two. And obviously, if you know about the
59:23
story of, you know, Stephen being martyred, it was under the watchful guys. And again,
59:29
whenever I read through the book of Acts, we studied the book of Acts here recently on my show,
59:33
we do something called the forging table where it's me and three other laymen going through books
59:36
of the Bible, one hour at a time, one chapter at a time normally. And so we go through Acts,
59:41
and it's like, Stephen or Saul is basically introduced almost like this mafia dawn,
59:47
this mob boss who's just, you know, watching over like this evil guy in the back. Like,
59:53
it's very much almost like feels like a comic book where, you know, they didn't tell you this
59:57
guy's the bad guy, but he's overlooking something that's really bad. And so that's how he's introduced
1:00:02
into history, really. And so I guess as a, because you're a bunch of different things,
1:00:08
you're a director, you're a showrunner, you're an executive producer, you're a writer, you have
1:00:12
all these different jobs, you know, all these different things, how do you create a moment like
1:00:16
that without dialogue? Like, what's what's the how? Because you could miss it. If you're half paying
1:00:22
attention and looking at your phone, you miss it. If you haven't read the book of Acts in real life,
1:00:27
you miss it. But how do you get such a pregnant moment put into there and down on film?
1:00:33
I mean, there's a lot of, it's fun. We even in the script, we talk about the chaos, the chaos,
1:00:39
the chaos of everyone, you know, scrambling to get out of there. And then you literally put a
1:00:44
line break in and you go and in the silence, Steven, and in the silence sort. So you can almost read
1:00:50
that happening in a screenplay. And then you almost try and emulate that on screen, you know, we,
1:00:56
those two have their own close ups. We also got the wides of everything going crazy.
1:01:02
And then a lot of it is in the sound design. You're making sure that everything is as big
1:01:06
as possible. And then suddenly some honing in happens. It's like, you know, when suddenly you
1:01:12
start to whisper, people lean in. It's that kind of film trickery, as you might call it,
1:01:18
the invitation to go, if something important's happening here. And what's fun is a lot of people
1:01:23
who don't, because it's funny, a lot of people don't aren't really familiar with the book of
1:01:26
acts. They go book of acts, road to Damascus. So I'm like, that is a very small part of the book
1:01:33
of acts. Like it's, it is, it is very important, but it's very small. And so there's just so much
1:01:41
in there. So people don't necessarily clock it. And they more asked questions go, what was that
1:01:45
about? And that I enjoy, because then by, you know, by whenever it happens in the season,
1:01:51
or the series, it'll, it'll mean something. But throughout the whole season for us,
1:01:57
it was also to put people in the, in the place of believers today, you know, Stephen's heart
1:02:02
throughout the show is he wants to see Jesus, he would love to. And wouldn't we all, wouldn't we
1:02:08
just, I don't know about you, but I'm like, Oh man, that that's just, I believe sure, but it just be,
1:02:14
it would just be all the sweeter if I get a sea Jesus. But he says that lines Thomas. She goes,
1:02:22
you know, blessed are those who believe, but don't see. And that that's a hard pill to swallow. And
1:02:28
yet it's the, the pill that we all have had to be interesting in the New Testament. There are two
1:02:35
people who get to see the ascended Jesus as in Jesus post ascension. That's all we get in the
1:02:41
biblical records. And it's Stephen, and it's all. And it's interesting, and it's interesting when
1:02:46
one leaves the story, the other is introduced in the biblical record. So yeah, it's fun.
1:02:51
Absolutely. Well, we're kind of winding to a close here. So let's talk about the future. So
1:02:57
we've got this out now, the entire first season is out now. So what's the plan? What's the goal?
1:03:03
What's the aspiration for where we go from here? Is it a continuation of Testament?
1:03:08
Is it another project under the angel banner outside the angel banner? What's next for you?
1:03:12
Yeah, so yeah, we are with this whole Testament is planned as a multi season TV show. So we're
1:03:20
looking at our six roughly seasons. You don't want to say a number because you don't know until you
1:03:27
get there. But we estimate it's around six. So yeah, we're now exploring options for season two.
1:03:35
How to finance it. That's always the big thing with with TV shows and films, and and how to
1:03:42
we're in the writing process. So that's that's always fun. I really enjoy that. And hopefully,
1:03:46
hopefully we get a film or start pre production at least quite soon. Other projects. Yeah. It was
1:03:53
early on with angel that they invited me to jump on a project about CS Lewis and JR Tolkien
1:04:01
called fellowship, which is where we're doing as a movie. So the script's still in development.
1:04:07
It's looking really good. And I'm due to direct that at some point. But that's all all data always
1:04:14
up in the air until everything's locked. And as soon as something's locked, you can't get hold
1:04:18
of them because they're busy doing that that work. So yeah, all up in the air. But that's okay. I
1:04:25
think God likes juggling. So okay, very good. Well, hey, I've really enjoyed this conversation.
1:04:30
We've gone to a lot of different subject matters, including me being taught the difference between
1:04:35
what was it, miming and pantomiming. These are not the same thing guys breaking news. Okay,
1:04:40
breaking it here on the show. But that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your
1:04:44
chest? No, just I would I would genuinely say check the show out. It's unlike anything you've seen.
1:04:51
It is bizarre. It is different. It is quite dangerous and thrilling. But yeah, it's certainly a lot of
1:04:58
fun as well. All right, Paul, thanks again for coming on. Thanks, Kyle.
1:05:02
There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Paul. But before we let you go,
1:05:05
we are going to do a quick resilience boost. Add on to life, our mission is equipping men to push
1:05:09
back darkness with content that forges spiritual mental and physical resilience. So I've got a link
1:05:12
to the angel website where you can go and watch Testament. So again, you have to be part of the
1:05:17
angels, the angel guild and all that. So you just go there, you can check it out. Make sure you check
1:05:21
out the series Testament. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this,
1:05:25
please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you want me to come speak live
1:05:29
at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an email to info@undonton.life. That's i-n-f-o
1:05:35
@undonton.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for
1:05:39
everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go
1:05:42
to www.undonton.life. And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use
1:05:47
their music for our content. The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their
1:05:52
self-titled debut album on Face Down Records. The links are in the description. I'm your host,
1:05:57
Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience,
1:06:04
keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:06:22
[Music]