Actress on "The Chosen" Says Series Has Changed Her Faith: "God Has Been There the Whole Time"
Elizabeth Tabish, the actress who plays Mary Magdalene on the hit Bible-based series, “The Chosen,” had almost given up on acting.
Her faith, too, was disappearing. Liz reported to CBN News that she had been wrestling with skepticism about Jesus and her own faith.
All that has changed through her experience playing the pivotal role on this life-changing series created by Dallas Jenkins.
And it almost didn’t happen!
Liz was living in Austin, Texas and working as a commercial actress. The business is brutal, though, and she was losing heart. Acting wasn’t providing enough income to make ends meet.
“‘[I] was really depressed and not knowing what to do,’ she told CBN’s Faithwire.”
Her agent submitted her for the key role in “The Chosen,” now about to release its third season.
Liz describes herself as a rational person but she admits, “It’s been really hard to ignore that there’s something really special about this experience for me. I feel like I wasn’t able to — I wouldn’t have been able to connect with the Lilith portion of [Mary Magdalene] had I not gone through some painful things.”
“Because of that, I’m realizing … God has been there the whole time,” Tabish continued. “There are these moments in the show where I’m actually saying that: ‘In the depths, in the heights, You are there.’ So there’s been these really sweet, sort of idiosyncratic things for me personally throughout this show that are constant reminders that God’s love is real. It’s a real thing and I’ve been slowly opening up to it.”
As Tabish has immersed herself in the role, she’s come to appreciate Mary as a person, but also to appreciate the “the richness of Scripture and Jesus’ ministry on earth.”
According to an interview in The Stillwater Press, prior to playing Mary, she “was really disappointed in the quality of characters written for women and kind of creatively unfulfilled because of that, but I was booking enough to keep my head above water.”
She was amazed when she received the information on this role, however, noting that it “was so well written, a female character that had so much emotional depth and psychological richness and challenges as an actor to play all this range of emotions. When I got the audition sides, I was so moved by the writing and so excited about this dream role, Mary Magdalene, and written so well as a fully fleshed-out human.”
The trailer for Season 3 of “The Chosen” released today. The theme for this season is “Come to me, you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
Prior to getting this role, Liz was weary of the one-dimensional roles for women and heavy-laden with making a living in acting. She has found the rest and renewed hope she needs in portraying an imperfect woman changed by Jesus Christ.
Life mimics art in all the best ways in the intersection of Liz’s story with “The Chosen.”
