{"id":15126,"date":"2013-03-08T18:25:27","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T23:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/?p=15126"},"modified":"2013-05-07T11:01:56","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T15:01:56","slug":"mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Burnett and Roma Downey on \u201cThe Bible\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- http:\/\/www-tc.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/rss\/media\/video\/episode-1627-thebible-interview.m4v --><strong>He is best known as the executive producer of \u201cSurvivor.\u201d His wife starred in \u201cTouched by an Angel.\u201d Together they have produced a 10-hour series for the History Channel on \u201cGod\u2019s love story\u201d\u2014the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Watch them describe their religious backgrounds and the inspiration behind the project.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>MARK BURNETT<\/strong>: I grew up with a Presbyterian mom and a Catholic dad. And never a bad word between them. Especially on the subject of the Bible. I don\u2019t remember ever as a kid not having bibles in our house.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ROMA DOWNEY<\/strong>: Faith is deeply important to me, has been since I was a child. I was raised in a family of faith. I\u2019ve always found deep comfort in it, was particularly thrilled in the early \u201890\u2019s to be cast to play an angel on &#8220;Touched by an Angel,&#8221; which as you know ran for almost 10 years and delivered a central message of God\u2019s love. It was such a privilege to be the messenger on that and my old Irish father used to say &#8220;the family that prays together stays together.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>BURNETT<\/strong>: It\u2019s 66 books, you know, and we consider it to be one story. It\u2019s one story. And the through-line, as we approached it was, it\u2019s the story of God\u2019s love for all of us. That\u2019s what this book is. And we did Genesis through Revelation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DOWNEY<\/strong>: We only had ten hours so clearly we, you know, we had to make choices. But one of the decisions that we made early on was that whatever stories we told, we wanted to tell them in way that will make emotional connections with the audience, and that sometimes requires a little bit deeper storytelling. It takes up more time to allow you the opportunity to start to care about the character, so that you can come into the story and walk in the footsteps of that character.<\/p>\n<p><strong>BURNETT<\/strong>: We\u2019ve approached this as God\u2019s love story, God\u2019s love of all of us. There\u2019s only one perfect character in the entire 66 books. That\u2019s Jesus Christ. Everybody else, to lesser or greater degrees, are flawed, like all of us. And people have huge problems, I mean, in kings, but still God didn\u2019t give up. And that\u2019s the message. It\u2019s like an unconditional love story.<\/p>\n<p><strong>DOWNEY<\/strong>: We made it knowing that, that we would hope that somebody\u2019s grandmother might watch it, but that the teenagers would watch it. You know, it\u2019s, it\u2019s a story of our time. It\u2019s the story of our God. And we wanted to make it as well as we could and we prayed every step of the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The executive producer of \u201cSurvivor\u201d and his wife, who starred in \u201cTouched by an Angel,\u201d talk about the inspiration behind their latest television project, a 10-hour series for the History Channel on the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/\" class=\"more\">More <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":18148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6569],"tags":[1965,4689,4209],"class_list":["post-15126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-videocast","tag-bible","tag-christianity","tag-television","faith-christian"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mark Burnett and Roma Downey on \u201cThe Bible\u201d | March 8, 2013 | Religion &amp; Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The executive producer of \u201cSurvivor\u201d and his wife, who starred in \u201cTouched by an Angel,\u201d have produced a 10-hour series for the History Channel on \u201cGod\u2019s love story\u201d\u2014the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Watch them describe their religious backgrounds and the inspiration behind the project.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mark Burnett and Roma Downey on \u201cThe Bible\u201d | March 8, 2013 | Religion &amp; Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The executive producer of \u201cSurvivor\u201d and his wife, who starred in \u201cTouched by an Angel,\u201d have produced a 10-hour series for the History Channel on \u201cGod\u2019s love story\u201d\u2014the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Watch them describe their religious backgrounds and the inspiration behind the project.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion &amp; Ethics NewsWeekly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/PBS.ReligionEthics\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-03-08T23:25:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-05-07T15:01:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2013\/03\/thumb01-thebible-interviews.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"100\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Yi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ReligionEthics\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ReligionEthics\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Yi\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Fred Yi\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0576fe5f06986bc0418635994a2bcd47\"},\"headline\":\"Mark Burnett and Roma Downey on \u201cThe Bible\u201d\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-03-08T23:25:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-05-07T15:01:56+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/\"},\"wordCount\":467,\"commentCount\":16,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2013\/03\/thumb01-thebible-interviews.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Bible\",\"Christianity\",\"television\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Videocast\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/\",\"name\":\"Mark Burnett and Roma Downey on \u201cThe Bible\u201d | March 8, 2013 | Religion &amp; Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2013\/03\/08\/mark-burnett-and-roma-downey-on-the-bible\/15126\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2013\/03\/thumb01-thebible-interviews.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-03-08T23:25:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-05-07T15:01:56+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0576fe5f06986bc0418635994a2bcd47\"},\"description\":\"The executive producer of \u201cSurvivor\u201d and his wife, who starred in \u201cTouched by an Angel,\u201d have produced a 10-hour series for the History Channel on \u201cGod\u2019s love story\u201d\u2014the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. 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