Christian Piatt
Lots of people know about the new movie, “Killing Jesus,” premiering on Nat Geo Channel on Palm Sunday.
Most everyone who has heard about it has strong feelings about it, given that it’s based – at least sort of – on the book of the same name by Bill O’Reilly.
Some folks are abuzz about the fact that Haaz Sleiman, the star of the movie portraying Jesu, is a Muslim.
Few know that Sleiman grew up in the midst of turmoil in Lebanon, where his brother and mother nearly died in the midst of the fighting. Or how much living in a country surrounded by Syria on two sides and Israel on another informed his understanding of politics, religions and cultural identity. Or how living in a territory occupied, at different times in history, by the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and colonized by the French informed his thinking about what it means to live in occupied land, and what it’s like to flee from occupation and violence for a promise of something new.
That’s the stuff we wanted to know.
Listen in on this Homebrewed CultureCast mini-sode with Actor/Director Haaz Sleiman, who has appeared in projects as diverse as “Nurse Jackie,” “Ricochet” and “24,” as he shares his less-than-heroic story about being shot, how most Muslims actually look at the figure of Jesus, and how he ended up from surviving the Lebanese fight for independence to his current reality as a rising star on the Hollywood scene.
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Listen to the podcast HERE.
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