Roma Downey: Touched by the Bible

Gutenberg Bible (Attribution:  Raul654)

When heretofore up-and-coming actress Roma

Downey first had some major successes under her belt, she began receiving an "endless" deluge of "junk scripts."

The trite girlfriend/wife roles that these offered did not especially appeal to Downey's spiritual nature.  Then along came Touched By An Angel. Wikipedia reports that she began thinking:  Now

this is curious…   Not only did the faith-based

aspects intrigue her, but also the "two strong

female roles" of angels.  She auditioned for the role of Monica, and was delighted that Della Reese (who later officiated at Downey's 2007 wedding to television's hit-producer Mark Burnett) "ended up playing Tess."

Fast forward to now.  Downey and Burnett have executive-produced a ten-hour miniseries called The Bible.  It premiers March 3, 2013 on the History channel, and will run every week at 8 PM (EST) in two-hour segments, culminating on Easter Sunday.  It will then be widely distributed through other venues such as church curricula (having already been endorsed by such leaders as "Rick Warren, Joel Osteen and Cardinal Donald Wuerl").

Yahoo! News reports that the husband-and-wife team "tried to concentrate on stories in depth and on characters who would emotionally engage the audience."  Burnett spoke about his effort to offset the growing "Bible illiteracy" of today's youth.  He compared this information gap to never having heard of Shakespeare's Macbeth or King Lear, then added that Shakespeare might never have written these works if it weren't for the Bible.  

Downey stated that "she wanted to be part of something that would glorify God."  As a "devout Catholic," she considers her additional acting component as Mary (older Mother of Jesus) within the series to be a great honor.  Filming took place during hot and cold weather extremes with the aim of being "gritty and authentic." Downey explained, "We didn't want it to look like somebody had just stepped out of the dry cleaners." 

     

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_Downey

http://news.yahoo.com/husband-wife-behind-bible-miniseries-161636981.html

Copyright March 2, 2013 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved