(LifeSiteNews) — Catholic actor and director Mel Gibson affirmed that his film The Passion of the Christ deeply impacted people on the set, including through lightning strikes on a young man involved, during a new episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Almost two hours into the interview, Gibson told Rogan about how he felt he had to spiritually prepare himself for creating the upcoming Passion sequel film, Resurrection.
“You can’t go into a project as profound in nature as that without preparing yourself for it,” Gibson said. “And that’s going to take some sacrifice … I have to try to be better somehow to go and make that film.”
Rogan then highlighted how Jim Caviezel’s own role in The Passion of the Christ deeply affected the actor. “One of the things that I thought was fascinating was listening to Jim Caviezel talk about his experience playing Christ in your film. It truly changed the course of his whole life,” Rogan noted.
“It was fascinating to watch him work, actually,” Gibson replied. He told how he was never able to “buy” the performance of past portrayals of Jesus Christ in film — but with Caviezel, it was different.
Regarding Caviezel, Gibson said, “He did something that nobody else did, and I think he pulled it off, because I believed it. What did he do? He emptied himself out. And he invited something else in. He emptied himself out, and he meditated. And he let Christ in.”
“That role seemed to have a profound effect on him as a human being,” remarked Rogan, to which Gibson replied, “Oh, absolutely.”
Caviezel has publicly discussed many times how his role involved much suffering, acknowledging that this suffering helped him to grow, and even that it “made” his performance. This suffering included being accidentally scourged twice, open-heart surgery after five-plus months of hypothermia, and being struck by lightning.
“I was lit up like a Christmas tree,” he told the Washington Examiner of being struck by lightning while enacting the Sermon on the Mount.
Caviezel’s shoulder was also dislocated while carrying the cross during filming, which he continued to withstand to finish the film.
Yet, Caviezel has recently said that his greatest suffering during the span of filming was not a physical one.
“The greatest pain I felt on that film, even more than the hypothermia, was this. I was in a dream and I felt God’s love so powerful, but I knew He wasn’t close enough. I said, ‘You’re not close enough to me and my concern is, the world won’t see Jesus.’ When we were on the cross together, He was completely playing the scene, and that was my prayer. But the pain I felt was all those people in the world that do not love Him,” Caviezel said during an interview with TBN.
Caviezel was not the only one to be deeply impacted by the filming — or be struck by lightning — on the set of The Passion of the Christ. Gibson told Rogan how then-22-year-old Jan Michelini, a tall assistant on set, was moved after being twice struck by lightning on the set.
Gibson said Michelini was first “zapped” by lightning while holding an umbrella as they walked off a hill to avoid this very scenario — and Michelini seemed to brush it off.
“But he’s 22 and he goes to the disco all night. He comes back the next day and he was like, yeah, it was great,” Gibson told Rogan.
The second time it happened, the young man was with Caviezel — according to other reports, only five minutes after Cavizel himself was struck. Gibson said he found him curled up, “with his knees up around his ears, and he’s, like, waiting for the third strike.”
“He’s like, this just doesn’t happen twice. And he says, ‘I have to change my life.’”
What Gibson and Rogan did not discuss were the full-fledged conversions experienced by prominent actors in the film: that of Luca Lionello, who played Judas; and of Pietro Sarubbi, who played Barabbas.
Lionello was a self-proclaimed “angry atheist,” but before end of filming, “He asked for confession,” according to on-set priest Father John Bartunek.
“Apparently, he had been completely transformed by the experience. He baptized his children, sanctified his marriage and came back to the Church,” Bartunek said.
Sarubbi has written a book about his conversion experience, which was sparked by the moment he emerged in the film and sees Jesus for the first time as he is being released to freedom.
“When our eyes met, I felt a sort of surge. It was like I was really seeing Jesus. I had never experienced such a thing in all my years of acting,” the Italian actor said.
“It was a big impact,” he told Zenit. “I felt as if there was an electric current between us. I saw Jesus Himself.”
“I am not embarrassed to say that during the filming I had a conversion. All of the actors who took part changed a little bit after this experience, but I have learned much more from the film than from any conference,” Sarubbi told CNA.
He said his spiritual search “began many years ago and took me around the world. I have done extensive anthropological research, as a man and as an actor. I have been instructed in the martial arts … I lived in a Tibetan monastery for six months with a vow of silence. I have practiced meditation in India, I have lived in the Amazon. I have reached the final goal of this search in Jesus.”