House of David, Wonder Project, and the rise of biblical storytelling
Plus: a new clip from Season 2 Episode 3, and links to some of the more interesting soundbites from the show's cast and producers.
I wrote an article about House of David and the launch of the Wonder Project streaming channel for Christianity Today. It includes part of an interview I did last week with House of David creator Jon Erwin. Here’s how it begins:
Ten years ago, in the wake of Noah, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and the History Channel’s The Bible miniseries, a couple of major networks tried to cash in on the growing appetite for biblical stories by launching some Scripture-themed TV shows.
NBC got the ball rolling with A.D.: The Bible Continues, a series beginning with the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was canceled after just one season. By that point, ABC had already started shooting Of Kings and Prophets, a series about David, Goliath, and King Saul’s family. When it premiered one year later, it lasted all of two episodes before the network pulled the plug.
Now, a decade later, there is another major series about Jesus and the disciples and another about Saul and David. This time, they’re on streaming platforms, not legacy networks. And they’re both very popular. With the premiere of House of David season 2 last Sunday—one week after The Chosen’s fifth season became available worldwide on its free app—they are both genuine, bona fide, multiseason TV shows.
But there’s more to note here than larger viewership and relative longevity. In both cases, the makers of these shows are using their success to create new infrastructure, with the aim of supporting more Bible-based media in the long term.
You can read the rest here.
This is the third article I’ve written about the series for CT. I reviewed the first three episodes back when Season 1 premiered, and then, at the end of the season, I wrote an article looking at how “biblically accurate” the entire season had been.
This is also the second time I’ve interviewed series creator Jon Erwin. I previously spoke to him via Zoom back in February, when Season 1 came out.
Meanwhile, via Broadway World, we have a new clip from Season 2 Episode 3, which comes out on Sunday. In it, Jonathan trains David in the art of combat:
If any more videos from Episode 3 pop up, I will add them here. In the meantime, you can see some clips from the first two episodes (and Season 1) here.
October 11 update: Here’s another clip, of David talking to Mychal:
Elsewhere in coverage of Season 2…
I’ve looked at a lot of the other articles that have been written about this season, and I figured I’d round up a few of the more interesting (to me, at least) quotes.
Michael Iskander, actor (David)
First, lead actor Michael Iskander focuses on what he got to do in Season 2 that he didn’t get to do in Season 1: wear armour and use a sword!
Showbiz Cheat Sheet, in which he focuses on the sword:
Much of David’s transformation in season 2 is internal, as he wrestles with the knowledge that he is meant to be Israel’s future king. But there’s a physical shift as well. Iskander put on 15 pounds between seasons and worked with the stunt team to master the sword-fighting techniques necessary to bring this season’s battle sequences to life.
“In season 1, I kept thinking to myself, I really just want a sword,” Iskander laughed, recalling how he watched other actors with their weapons while he had just the sling his character needed to defeat the giant Goliath.
EURweb, in which he focuses on getting out of his tunic:
Season two finds David stepping out of his shepherd’s sandals and into the role of a rising warrior. “We leave David in season one, the first act of war that he takes against Goliath. But he’s still a shepherd. He’s still in his tunic. He’s still in his sandals. He does not have a sword,” Iskander said. “And what we find in season two is that he really evolves and he becomes this man, this warrior that God has called him to be. And how that affects everybody around him. This famous warrior now is creating a lot of political drama in the palace.” . . .
Season two explores new romantic and political tensions, but Iskander was most eager to embrace David’s transformation into a commander. “I was really excited for the warrior part,” he said. “In season one, everybody around me had swords; they all had armor, they all looked, you know, super cool. And I was just out here in my little tunic. I was like, man, I just want to be a warrior.”
Jon Gunn, writer-director-producer
Set during the Iron Age, the new season uses the shift from bronze to iron as a metaphor for transformation. Gunn explained, “Our show is set right at that transition from the age of [bronze] to the age of iron. If you’ve got iron and your enemy doesn’t, you have a massive advantage. Goliath’s iron sword symbolizes this new power—and David himself becomes a weapon forged in fire.”
He added that the historical authenticity also helps modern audiences connect with the story’s universal themes. “It’s fun to get into the details of what it was to make iron when no one really knew how to make it and how it would change the world,” Gunn said.
For what it’s worth, my understanding is that the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is typically dated to around 1200 BC, which would be about two hundred years before David. Indeed, it is typically associated with the “Late Bronze Age collapse”, a period of great upheaval that—to mix historical and legendary reference points—included the end of the Hittite empire, the fall of Troy, the rise of the Philistines, and the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan.
While we’re at it, here are some quotes about Season 1…
I also collected a bunch of quotes from the filmmakers when Season 1 came out but never got around to posting them. So… here they are, grouped by interviewee.
Jon Erwin, series creator
“The first script I ever wrote, in 2012, was the life of David,” said Erwin . . .
“The script I wrote would encompass three seasons,” Erwin said in a Zoom interview from his home in Franklin, Tenn. “We’ve done one of three. We’ll see if, God willing, we can finish it.”
Well, two down, one to go, now!
For what it’s worth, when I interviewed Erwin last week, I asked if he was still planning to do three seasons—I’d seen hints that he might have more in mind, now—and he replied:
Well, there’s three seasons. There’s a trilogy that is the rise of David. And then you have the later part of David’s life that would almost be a different show. It’d be a different cast. It would be decades later. But the trilogy of House of David is his rise. . . . And then, you know, I could anticipate that there’s another trilogy in the back half of David’s life.
Back to the pull-quotes. ComingSoon.net:
Really, what was illuminating to me was the title of the show, House of David, came from the oldest relic ever discovered related to the Bible. It was the stele that read House of David. 9th Century BC, it was dated to. And I felt that was interesting. These houses were just pitted against each other, you know, and I wanted to humanize the House of Saul as much as we did the House of David.
I can remember when that stele was first discovered; I was taking university courses in biblical history at the time. You can read about the stele here.
“It was our goal to ensure that the specific details of the Bronze Age were woven into the show in a way that felt authentic and interesting,” Gunn said. “The more you lean into the specificity and the correctness of that, the more interesting the show becomes. But beyond that, we're dealing with really important source material … we take that extremely seriously. We want to deliver to an audience that knows this content and loves this content.”
One example of Erwin and Gunn's commitment to authenticity is how they paid careful attention to the small details, like the length of Samuel’s hair (Nazarites, in the Old Testament, were not permitted to cut their hair).
Samson is the most famous example of a Nazirite, of course, but he and Samuel were unusual in that their commitment was life-long. Most Nazirite vows were temporary, as per Numbers 6:1-21. (It appears that Paul and other early Jewish Christians took these vows sometimes too, as per Acts 21:20-26 and possibly 18:18.)
[O]ne of the things that you start to confront is, why in the world, would this character, Goliath, strike so much fear into the army of Israel? Well, when you do that, you go all the way back to Moses, and when Moses spies, into the land, those spies came out and said, There’s walled cities. There’s really tall people. And the sons of Anak there, the Nephilim were there. And so no matter what you believe, what Israelites at the time would have believed sitting around campfires was that Goliath was basically a son of the Nephilim and a demigod. And what we play is that that’s what Goliath believed about himself as well. So, you know, we play with the Ministry of it. We play with the the myth of it. But I do think it’s absolutely consistent with the Bible that the whole reason that Israel walked around the wilderness for 40 years is because they were afraid of people just like Goliath, and that is the fear he would have struck into the army of Israel.
The story Erwin’s describing is told in Numbers 13-14.
Michael Iskander, actor (David)
KS95:
“I knew that whoever would play David would have to sing the Psalms in Hebrew because it has to be in the original language. It has to be on a lyre. It has to be with that Eastern ornamentation,” he says. “I had a bit of experience in that. I grew up in Egypt. I know what that music sounds like.”
Iskander sealed the deal in his auditions by revealing that he had thrown the shot put and the discus in high school. (Turns out discus-throwing is a similar motion to David's famed rock-slinging.)
"After a screen test, I was like, 'Guys, I used to throw the discus. Do you want to see?'" says Iskander. "I showed them the motion. And they were like, 'That's the move!' And it helped out, I guess. I got the job."
“I always found myself reverting to Scripture, and specifically the book of First and Second Samuel and the Psalms, and reading those, and reading the words that David wrote, the things that were on his heart, to truly infer who this person is. Who is David truly? What are his intentions? What are his goals?” said Iskander. “And I just tried to implement that in every scene, to find the essence, to find the heart of every scene, and the heart of David in that.”
Later, after he was first denied a role in the show, he felt discouraged; however, he got a rare second opportunity. He fasted and prayed over the callback before submitting the additional audition tapes. Iskander then received a FaceTime call from the team telling him that he got the part.
In order to play the role of David, Iskander learned how to play the lyre and throw stones in a sling. During auditions, Iskander also was taught how to recite the Shema prayer in Hebrew and sing the Psalms in their original language and dialect.
Iskander also said because David is a huge figure, he had to bring David down from a pedestal in his own mind and see him as a real person, which helped him to see Scripture like never before.
“The show for me shouldn’t be called ‘House of David’ but instead ‘House of the Lord,’ because it is about him,” Iskander said.
Indy Lewis, actor (Mychal)
“My favorite part of playing Mychal is the family scenes that we had and being able to really jump into those different dynamics,” she said.
“The relationship that she has with her siblings and with her parents is so realistic, and there is so much love there. It is so complex and the way that different people bring out different sides of her has been really interesting and fun to play,” she elaborated.
“Mychal is a bit of a people pleaser, for sure,” she admitted. “Mychal is someone that goes into a room and has to monitor and work out how everyone is feeling. She has to take the temperature of the room before she can understand how to enter and what to bring in, and what people need from her.”
I assume she grows out of that, given what happens in II Samuel 6:16-23.
Stephen Lang, actor (Samuel)
When we think of the Old Testament, we very often think of very serious, furrowed brows, a lot of retribution, a lot of anger, a lot of blood and guts, and that kind of thing. And there's a reason we think that way.
One of the things that totally surprised me as I worked on this, because it was completely unanticipated, was the sense of joy and levity that I got when I was in the presence of David. That was something I couldn’t account for, other than the fact that he makes Samuel feel good—he makes him feel good about what he's doing. Samuel never lacks confidence. Throughout his long career, he never displays self-doubt at all.
But I think, for example, his relationship with Saul, which is a very loving relationship, has always had a problematic nature to it, Saul is someone he's always kind of kept an eye on, someone who needs to be steered correctly in a way. But David brings out a whole other aspect of Samuel that, as I say, I wasn’t looking for when I played the part, but it became a very, very important aspect of the character in terms of rounding him into a full human being.
Lang explained what it was like portraying 1 Samuel 15:32-33, in which Samuel cuts the Amalekite King Agag to pieces.
“[King] Agag is just a walking offense,” Lang said. “He’s just living filth.”
“Samuel was a warrior,” Lang said. “He’s not just some old dude who’s kind of walking around, you know, prophesying and blessing and settling disputes and stuff like that—he went to war.”
Lang has had the opportunity to portray several roles in which he “either [administers] a beating or, many times, [gets] a good beating myself.”
“It would have been disappointing to me to be in a production with as much violence and killing as this one and not to be able to dispatch at least one guy,” he added.
Samuel’s experience as a political or even military leader is described in passages like I Samuel 7. Samuel also associates himself with military figures like Gideon, Barak, and Jephthah in most versions of I Samuel 12:11.
Ayelet Zurer, actor (Ahinoam)
She's mentioned really just twice and a half. If it's exactly the same woman, we're not sure, but one time she's mentioned in the Bible when Saul is in a field, and then she sees him and picks him up, pretty much, and then she becomes his wife. So just from that, you can see that this is a woman with agency; she knows what she wants and she goes and gets it, just from that little snippet.
But basically, what they created is really interesting because she is a woman who struggles with her faith. She feels abandoned by the same God that anointed her husband three times, and also, she can't let go of the idea of him being King. So gradually, she grasps so hard to keep that idea afloat that she becomes somewhat of a villain in a way.
I have no idea what Zurer is referring to when she says Ahinoam is “mentioned really just twice and a half” or that there’s a passage “in the Bible when Saul is in a field, and then she sees him and picks him up, pretty much”. As far as I know, the name “Ahinoam” comes up seven times in the Bible, not two and a half, and only one of those verses is definitely referring to Saul’s wife (I Samuel 14:50)—and it says nothing about a field. (The other six verses all refer to one of David’s wives, who may or may not have been the same person—and none of those verses mention a field, either.)
Martyn Ford, actor (Goliath)
When it comes to the epic battle between David and Goliath, Ford said “There’s not much standing and delivering blows or kicks in what you’d probably presume a battle to be. It was massively emotional,” he shared.
“It was more a battle of minds than a battle of physicality,” he added. “I think that’s what made this so special. It was hitting each other without physically hitting each other.”
And, that’s it.
I believe there were some other interviews that I wanted to include last spring, but I think I lost them in a browser crash. Ah well, this’ll do for now.