The hit Christian show “The Chosen,” which tracks the life of Jesus and his disciples and is now on Season 4, has managed to garner not only an incredible number of Christian viewers, but also a massive number of non-believer viewers, some of whom are hopefully pulled toward faith in Jesus by watching it. Such is what the Vice President of Original Content with The Chosen, Katherine Warnock, told ChristianHeadlines.
In fact, according to Warnock, about a third of the show’s viewership is non-Christian, with some of those being curious about Christianity. Speaking to ChristianHeadlines about the data, Warnock said that over half of the show’s viewers are Christian and about a third are non-Christian or curious about Christianity.
In her words, “We recently had some data come through that showed over half [of viewers] were either practicing Christians or cultural Christians.” She continued, “And then about 30 percent were either curious about Christianity or just no Christian faith. And we were deeply surprised about that.”
Warnock also said that, although the main demographic among the show’s viewership is older Americans, there are also a good number of young people who are showing up to watch it. “We were also surprised about the level of Gen Z and younger that were consuming our show — because our core audience is definitely millennial and older,” she said.
Continuing, she then added that the show has garnered both female and male viewers, which she was pleased by gien how many men, particularly young men, are less interested in church. She said, “But just to see not only the balance between female and males watching our show, which is wonderful — because the church is definitely not that balanced at times — and then to see the younger generation but also the non-Christian faith audience come to the table has been a joy.”
The interview with ChristianHeadlines was not the first time that Warnock spoke about The Chosen reaching younger viewers. For example, in 2023, Warnock told Peer Magazine that the team behind the show is passionate about trying to reach a wider audience for the show’s Gospel message, particularly when it comes to reaching out to Gen Z.
She said, “We have a huge passion for Gen Z. It’s such a phenomenal generation and I think an often-misunderstood generation, church and unchurch alike. And so, for us, Olivia, we were also seeing that Gen Z was responding so positively to The Chosen and that, quite frankly, shocked us and encouraged us. And so, Derral Eves, executive producer of The Chosen—I like to call him the godfather of YouTube. He helped create big content creators like Mr. Beast, for example. So, he had this great idea one day, he said, “Katherine, I’ve got an idea. I want to bring together a whole bunch of Gen Z-ers but not tell them what they’re going to binge and we just surprise, make them binge Jesus.” I was like, “okay.” And then, he walks away. So, I’m like, okay, I’ve got to create this whole reality out of his vision. So, we ended up as a blind case study casting nine Gen Z-ers from around the world of all different backgrounds, of all different worldviews, and we brought them together for the surprise of binging Jesus and watching their shock and awe as we finally reveal to them, you’re going to binge Jesus. And it was really fun, and we watched as they had a very honest dialogue about the good, the bad, the ugly … [of] Christians, culture, their generation. And what came through the documentary, in my opinion, was pure magic.”
Continuing, she noted that the show has had huge success in helping all sorts of people. She said, “we have not only evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, we also have Agnostics, Atheist, Buddhists, Hindus, even Satanists writing us every day going, okay, “This show is changing my life. This is helping me overcome depression, suicidal ideation. This is helping me—even though I’m not a Christian, I’ve now become a student of Jesus.” That’s pretty extraordinary. And so, I think it’s two things. I think it’s the humanity and the authenticity that the show is intent and the playfulness, it’s intimate, it’s playful, it’s dynamic, it’s disruptive. And we’ve never really, in my opinion, having worked in Faith media for going on 20 years at this point, I think that’s very rare. As Christians, we’re not usually very good at being in the messiness of life and letting Jesus encounter us in that messiness. We’re not good at letting that have a platform and so, “The Chosen” lets us be in process; “The Chosen” shows us that Jesus loves us when we’re in process. He meets us as we are and then takes us on a journey. We’re not just perfect that out of the gate. And so, I loved that “The Chosen” chose that level of humanity and I think that authenticity, that permission to come as you are, and meet the authentic Jesus—I think that’s what Gen Z is responding to on the most.”
Featured image credit: By The Chosen press photos (press.thechosen.tv) – https://www.press.thechosen.tv/?pgid=judjmpl7-c1493a39-5527-4ff7-bdc5-8439d32fbfdc, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93752539