Watch: Herod's son is ready for his close-up in a new Journey to Bethlehem featurette
Joel Smallbone, of the Christian pop duo For King & Country, plays Antipater.
Two featurettes in one week!
Three days ago, Affirm Films, the “faith-based” producers of the upcoming Christmas musical Journey to Bethlehem, released a promotional video that introduced us to Mary’s sisters from that film. Now they’ve got a new video that introduces us to King Herod’s oldest son Antipater, who is played in the film by Joel Smallbone of the Christian pop duo For King & Country.
You can watch the video here—and be warned, it starts on a spoiler-y note:
A few quick notes (and yes, at the very end of this list, I will mention the spoiler):
It’s unusual to see Antipater in a film like this. Most Nativity films, if they focus on Herod’s sons at all, focus on the similarly-named Antipas, who figures prominently in the gospels as the tetrarch who executed John the Baptist and tried to kill Jesus as well, decades after the events of this story.1
As I’ve mentioned before, the historical Antipater was executed for conspiring against his father… and both of them died in 4 BC, which is also the year that many people think Jesus was born. Kind of makes you wonder if the film will link Antipater’s death to the Nativity somehow, doesn’t it?
This video includes clips from ‘In My Blood’, a dramatic, introspective song sung by Antipater, and ‘Good to Be King’, a more comedic song that is sung primarily by Antonio Banderas’s Herod but also features Smallbone’s Antipater. (Smallbone says he was “crying, I was laughing so hard” while filming that sequence.)
This is not the first time Smallbone has played a royal figure in a Bible movie. He previously played the Persian King Xerxes in 2013’s The Book of Esther.
In 2019, it was announced that Smallbone and his brother/bandmate Luke were developing a “period musical” called The Drummer Boy, which was going to be produced by the studio that made Jesus Revolution. I have heard nothing about that project since, but I wonder if it, too, was going to be a dramatization of the Nativity. The Smallbones’ band, For King & Country, went on to perform ‘Little Drummer Boy’ in The Chosen’s first Christmas special in 2020.
Smallbone’s wife Moriah also appears in Journey to Bethlehem, as one of the sisters-of-Mary who were profiled in that other video three days ago. She appears in this video, too, to talk about Joel’s work on the film (“It’s been emotional at times, because I am in, like, absolute admiration of his skill, his ability, his heart, his work ethic . . . The man has never danced with a spear in a hotel room more”).
And here comes the spoiler-y bit:
Smallbone says Antipater “would have been the first convert, the first believer in Jesus,2 because we’ve sort of woven him into the Nativity scene.” That’s the first big hint we’ve seen anywhere about the role that Antipater plays in this film.
And, that about covers it for now.
The film comes to theatres November 10, i.e. five weeks from now.
Past posts on Journey to Bethlehem:
‘Has The Road to Bethlehem not been filmed yet?’ (August 19, 2022)
‘Adam Anders’ Nativity musical now filming in Spain’ (February 23, 2023)
‘Adam Anders’ Nativity musical gets a title’ (April 3, 2023)
‘Watch: The teaser trailer for Journey to Bethlehem’ (April 28, 2023)
‘Watch: Earnest and jokey moments mix in the official trailer for Journey to Bethlehem’ (September 14, 2023)
‘Watch: Actors, producers discuss Journey to Bethlehem in a new featurette’ (September 20, 2023)
‘Watch: The lead actors talk Mary and Joseph in a new Journey to Bethlehem featurette’ (September 29, 2023)
‘Watch: Mary’s sisters sing about marriage in a new Journey to Bethlehem featurette’ (October 3, 2023)
Antipas’s execution of John the Baptist is well-known, his opposition to Jesus not so much—but the gospel of Luke and its sequel do say that Herod, i.e. Antipas, was looking for Jesus in order to kill him (Luke 13:31-33), and that Herod and Pilate, who used to be enemies, “became friends” after they “conspired” to kill Jesus (Luke 23:6-12, Acts 4:27-28).
“First believer in Jesus” hardly seems likely, given that Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the Magi all believed in Jesus on some level. But maybe none of them were “converts”?