When the Church issued a casting call for the Book of Mormon videos, Paul Wuthrich was among the actors who auditioned to play the role of Jesus Christ. You may recognize Paul from the movies Witnesses, Six Days in August, Escape from Germany, and Raising the Bar: The Alma Richards Story, which opens in theaters this month in the Intermountain West.
While the role of the Savior ultimately went to another actor, Paul says he is deeply grateful he got to audition for the part. “Honestly, the whole process was kind of its own thing, and I have a lot of fondness toward that experience,” he says.
Paul opened up about the unique process in a recent episode of the All In podcast with host Morgan Pearson.
What Is the Audition Process Like?
While all auditions involve careful preparation, the opportunity to play the Savior required a special level of time and intention.
For Paul, the audition process happened over the course of about half a year. First, he submitted a headshot with some basic information and then received a script directly taken from 3 Nephi. Next, he sent in a video submission of himself reciting the lines and waited to receive any updates.
“Six weeks later, two months later, three months later, you’d get [a message saying], ‘Hey, you’re still in the running,’ and then you’d submit another couple of pages,” Paul says.
After about six months of narrowing down the candidates, the Church’s production team invited Paul and two other actors to do a screen test in the motion picture studio lot in Provo, Utah. “There was full wardrobe and hair, and they filled in my patchy beard,” he says.
Paul memorized four or five pages of scripture as part of the screen test and performed live in front of a film crew and audience. Paul’s parents even had the opportunity to join the crowd.
“The whole thing was just an incredible experience,” he reflects. “We so often study in [the] third person, … but to study … Jesus Christ, to be that person, it just takes this mental shift because you’re on the giving end and not the receiving end.”
In addition to memorizing lines and making choices about the delivery and expression, Paul appreciated the chance to prepare spiritually and personally for this opportunity.
“There is a lot of prayer, and there’s fasting, and there’s spiritual preparation that goes into a role like that,” he says. “And there’s writing my testimony and submitting it to Church committees and being worthy, … all of this spiritual work—let alone the acting work.”
What Paul Realized Through Auditioning
As he prepared for the audition and pondered chapters in 3 Nephi, Paul had an important realization about why the Savior waited to offer healing until later during His visit to the Americas. He explains:
“He teaches them for a few chapters, and then He says, ‘I’m going to leave now.’ And He can tell in their faces that … they want Him to stay so badly. And so, then He says, ‘Have ye any [that are] sick among you? … Have ye any that are lame, … or halt, … [or that are in need]? Bring them [to me that] I can heal them.’
“He’s asking a question He already knows the answer to—not only because He is Christ, but because He just had this personal interaction with every single one of those people. I thought, ‘Wait a minute, if I’m Jesus Christ and all I want is for these people to be whole, why did I wait so long to offer them healing? I’ve waited four chapters. I was on my way out. Wouldn’t I have wanted to do that at the very beginning?’
“And suddenly, I realized that Christ requires something of us. … Suddenly, I realized that in my life, maybe I haven’t been waiting on Christ for all of these things. Maybe Christ has been waiting on me. And that was … an eye-opening moment.”
Even though Paul wasn’t offered the role, he believes there was divine guidance in the final decision.
“The hand of the Lord was so clear and so obvious in me participating in [other spiritual] films that I just have to accept that the hand of the Lord is there just as much when I don’t get the role,” he says. “There’s this element of, ‘Heavenly Father, if it’s your will that I get to portray this part, I hope that I can bring honor to it. And if not, then I’ll trust that there’s something else for me.’”
Hear more from Paul on the All In podcast, which is available on all streaming platforms. You can learn more about his newest movie, Raising the Bar: The Alma Richards Story here and in this article: An inspiring story from ‘Saints’ is now a feature-length film
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