It wouldn’t quite be accurate to say that Phil Wickham had never acted in a movie before getting the title role in the upcoming animated musical David.
The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter previously had a cameo as a worship leader in Breakthrough, one of a series of medical/miracle movies produced by DeVon Franklin in the 2010s. But the role, if you can call it that, wasn’t exactly a stretch for Wickham—who played one of his own hit songs in the film—and he admits now that he had “totally forgotten” he was even in that movie.
“I mean, is it really acting?” he asked when I spoke to him during a recent Zoom chat. “I literally was playing myself singing one of my songs. I did get an acting credit for that, but I don’t know, maybe that was a .5, it wasn’t quite a 1 on the docket.”
He definitely won’t forget working on David, though. For one thing, it fulfilled a “secret dream” he had had since he was a boy, singing along to the Lion King soundtrack and wishing he could voice an animated character. For another, David—who was sort of a singer-songwriter himself, as the author of numerous psalms—happens to be Wickham’s favorite Bible character (after Jesus, natch).
And third, it turned out the hardest part of the job was… the singing, which Wickham had to do a little differently from usual.
“Once the voice acting was done, I thought my heavy lifting was done,” he told me. “I was like, ‘Whew, okay, I did, like, my four or five sessions, whatever, that’s good, now I just get to sing, which I know how to do that.’ But that ended up turning into being the most challenging part for me, because I had to act more than sing, which I’m not used to.”
I had a chance to talk to Wickham about his work on the film—he plays the adult David, while Brandon Engman (star of the prequel series Young David) plays the younger version of the character—and you can listen to our interview above. If you’d rather read the auto-generated transcript, there’s a button for that, too.
Some of the main points we covered include:
Wickham’s role in Breakthrough, which I happened to be present for on-set (0:23).
Being the last main actor to be cast in David (1:37).
How he got the role in David (2:45).
The “secret dream” he had as a boy, to voice an animated character (3:30).
How he learned to play the role during his first audition (4:40).
Not wanting to mess up after seeing how good Engman was as young David (6:10).
His familiarity with the Young David series before he got cast in the film (7:10).
How the singing turned out to be more challenging than the acting (8:55).
Whether he had any input into the songs (10:22).
How a song he just wrote, based on Psalm 8, got to be in the end credits (12:00).
Whether he would like to act again, maybe even on camera (13:20).
For further reference:
Most of my posts about David are available via this tag.
I also wrote about the series Young David starting with the first episode here.
David is coming to theatres December 19, with early access screenings taking place this Sunday, December 14. Here’s the most recent trailer:
Angel Studios has also released several clips from the film, two of which feature Phil Wickham’s voice. ‘Follow the Light’ features a time-jump in which David goes from being a boy voiced by Brandon Engman to a man voiced by Wickham:
And ‘Why God - My God’ features David and his family on the run from King Saul, with behind-the-scenes footage of Wickham in the recording booth:
Here’s the soundtrack with the rest of the songs:
Here’s the official music video for ‘Psalm 8 (Hallé)’, the song that plays over the David end credits (though there is no mention of the film in this video):
And here’s a featurette on Wickham’s cameo as a worship leader in Breakthrough:
