Over three dozen new character profiles, and a few new videos, for A.D.: The Bible Continues

The official website for A.D.: The Bible Continues released over three dozen photos today to introduce us to the show’s main characters. A few new videos to promote the series have also surfaced since my last round-up. Check it all out below the jump.

First, the videos.

The producers released this featurette, in which actors Adam Levy (Peter), Richard Coyle (Caiaphas) and Juan Pablo Di Pace (Jesus) show us ’round the sets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G8E5n71cQk

Levy and Chipo Chung (Mary Magdalene) also spoke to WWLP in Massachusetts about working on the series, accompanied by some bits of new footage:

On a much more trivial note, Entertainment Tonight got producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey to talk about whether Burnett should get rid of his beard:

And now, the character profiles.

There are a lot of them here, and they’re listed on the website in no particular order, so I’m going to group them according to whether the characters are Christians, Zealots, Romans, and so on, and I will note which ones are fictitious as I go.

JESUS AND HIS FOLLOWERS FROM THE GOSPELS:

Jesus (Juan Pablo Di Pace):

Mary (Greta Scacchi), the mother of Jesus:

Peter (Adam Levy):

James (Denver Isaac), the brother of John:

John (Babou Ceesay), the brother of James:

Matthew (Pedro Lloyd Gardiner):

Thomas (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson):

Simon the Zealot (Fraser Ayres):

Judas Iscariot (Cesare Taurasi):

Mary Magdalene (Chipo Chung):

Joanna (Farzana Dua Elahe), the wife of Chuza, who manages Herod’s household:

Joseph of Arimathea (Kevin Doyle), who provides the tomb for Jesus’ body:

Note that only seven members of the Twelve are depicted here. Missing are Peter’s brother Andrew, Philip, James son of Alphaeus, Bartholomew/Nathanael and Thaddaeus/Jude. (The lists of names in the gospels don’t exactly match, so tradition has it that at least two of the apostles were known by multiple names.)

Note also that no members of Jesus’ family are depicted here except for his mother.

A MEMBER OF PETER’S FAMILY:

Maya (Helen Daniels), the daughter of Peter:

There is a tradition to the effect that Peter had a daughter, though her name is said to have been Petronilla, not Maya. Peter is the only member of the Twelve who is explicitly identified in the Bible as having a wife and a mother-in-law, so it stands to reason that he may have had a child as well. I can’t think of any other film that has depicted his female relatives, though, except for The Big Fisherman, in which Peter is a widower supporting his mother-in-law. (I assume the various word-for-word adaptations of Matthew and Luke have depicted his mother-in-law too.)

FOLLOWERS OF JESUS WHO ARE FIRST MENTIONED IN ACTS:

Barnabas (Kenneth Collard):

Stephen (Reece Ritchie), one of the seven Hellenistic Jewish deacons:

Philip (Joe Dixon), another of the seven Hellenistic Jewish deacons:

Ananias of Damascus (Nick Sidi):

Saul (Emmett J. Scanlan), the persecutor who eventually joins the Church and, under the name Paul, becomes one of its most consequential evangelists:

THE SAMARITANS (OR AT LEAST PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN SAMARIA):

Simon the Sorcerer (Stephen Walters), who comes into contact with both Philip and Peter when they visit Samaria (according to Acts 8):

Yitzhak (John Benfield), the fictitious henchman of Simon the Sorcerer’s:

THE JEWISH ZEALOTS:

Levi (Francis Magee), the presumably fictitious leader of the Zealots:

Eva (Charlene McKenna), the presumably fictitious daughter of Levi:

Boaz (George Georgiou), the presumably fictitious Zealot who is engaged to Eva:

THE JEWISH HIGH PRIESTS AND THEIR ASSOCIATES:

Caiaphas (Richard Coyle), the high priest at the time of Jesus’ death:

Leah (Jodhi May), the wife of Caiaphas, daughter of Annas and brother of Jonathan — and while her name might be fictitious, her place in the priestly family tree is not:

Annas (Ken Bones), the father of Leah and Jonathan, and father-in-law of Caiaphas:

Jonathan (Lex Shrapnel), the son of Annas and brother of Leah, who briefly replaced his brother-in-law as high priest after Caiaphas was deposed circa AD 36:

Reuben (Chris Brazier), the fictitious head of the temple guard:

Asher (Alex Lanipekun), a soldier of Saul’s as he persecutes the Christians:

THE HERODIAN FAMILY:

Herod Antipas (James Callis), the tetrach of Galilee until AD 39:

Herodias (Claire Cooper), the niece/wife of Antipas and sister of Agrippa:

Herod Agrippa (Michael Peluso), the brother of Herodias, nephew of Antipas and a friend of Caligula’s, who ruled Judea from AD 41 to his death in AD 44 (he also executed James, the brother of John, according to Acts 12):

THE ROMANS:

Pontius Pilate (Vincent Regan), the Roman governor of Judea:

Claudia (Joanne Whalley), the wife of Pontius Pilate:

Cornelius (Will Thorp), the centurion who eventually converts to Christianity — and who, in this version of the story, is also involved with the crucifixion of Jesus:

Tiberius (Kenneth Cranham), the Roman emperor until his death in AD 37:

Caligula (Andrew Gower), the Roman emperor from AD 37 to AD 41:

And that’s it, for now at least.

I must say, I wasn’t expecting this show to depict Tiberius and Caligula so directly. For some reason I had thought that this series would keep a narrow focus on Judea, without turning its cameras to the political machinations of the early emperors (except insofar as the emperors’ decisions impinged on life in Judea). But I may have been wrong about that. So this could be one more thing that this series has in common with that other 12-hour NBC series called A.D. — i.e. the one from 30 years ago.

Check out earlier trailers and other videos here:

• The first trailer (November 26, 2014)
• The ‘By Our Love’ music video (December 19, 2014)
• The ‘The Next Chapter of the Greatest Story Ever Told’ TV spot (January 12, 2015)
• The second trailer (January 17, 2015)
• The Super Bowl spot (February 1, 2015)
• The Newsboys’ ‘We Believe’ music video (February 10, 2015)
• The ‘First Look’ video (February 18, 2015)
• The ‘Special Preview’ video (February 24, 2015)
• The ‘Miracles’ clip, the ‘Igniting a Rebellion’, ‘He’s a Dangerous Man’ and ‘Power, Passion, Sacrifice and Glory’ previews, the Spanish trailer, the ‘33 Days’ video and two TV interviews (March 10, 2015)