Where We Belong (14 page)

W
e are like children, who stand in need of masters to enlighten us and direct us; God has provided for this, by appointing his angels to be our teachers and guides.

MARK BURNETT AND ROMA DOWNEY

When you play an angel on network television for nearly a decade, the halo tends to hover, even when you walk off the set. Roma Downey played Monica, the beloved angel featured in the CBS series
Touched by an Angel
, from 1994 to 2003, watched at its peak by as many as twenty-one million weekly viewers. Roma remembers the day she visited a children’s hospital during the holidays to spread some cheer to anguished families.

“As I was walking by a room,” she recalls quietly, “a family was coming out and their baby was dead on the bed. I took off the Santa Claus hat I was wearing to give them some space and dignity to their moment. Then the mother said, as she put her arms around me and started to cry, ‘I knew that God would send an angel for my baby, and here you are.’ ”

(Courtesy of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey)

Roma said a prayer with the mother and left the hospital, conflicted and concerned. When she got home, she immediately called her
Touched
castmate and dear friend Della Reese. Through tears, Roma expressed her anxiety that she might appear to be something that she wasn’t. Della reached out from the other end of the phone.

“She said, ‘Baby, she didn’t need an actress; she needed an angel.’ And I said, ‘But she thought that God had sent me there.’ Della answered, ‘Who said he didn’t?’ ”

God and faith were a significant part of Roma’s personal life well before her professional career. She grew up Roman Catholic in Northern Ireland and went to church every day. At ten years old, Roma lost her mother to a heart attack. She says her father’s strong faith provided their heartbroken family the comfort and courage to move forward. Her own strong faith consoled her at twenty when her father died.

Roma went on to study art and drama, and found work on Broadway and television. She would marry and divorce—and give birth to a daughter—before she crossed paths with Mark Burnett.

“My feet were in a bucket of water,” she says, laughing.

In 2004, Roma was getting a manicure and pedicure at the same salon where Mark was getting his hair cut. Their eyes met in the mirror several times, and both separately asked the receptionist, “Who is that?”

Mark was the prolific and successful television producer of megahit series such as
Survivor
and
Celebrity Apprentice
. A father of two sons, he’d divorced a year earlier. Mark was also raised in the United Kingdom, in London, where his Scottish parents had moved for more religious freedom and economic opportunity. His father was Catholic, his mother Protestant.

“There was less of a religious divide in London, a more cosmopolitan city,” Mark explains. “In Scotland, Catholics couldn’t even get jobs.”

When Roma and Mark began dating, they discovered they shared blue-collar backgrounds, raising children, and a belief in God. But Roma led with her faith; Mark tucked his in with a variety of other convictions he valued in life. That would change. But in Mark’s case, there was no pit in his stomach or voice in his head that told him something was missing, that he wasn’t where he belonged in terms of quality of life. The change for Mark was gradual. Call it divine intervention. An “angel” was placed in his life.

“In retrospect, you look at it and realize Roma was facilitating the change in her loving way all along,” Mark says, “but not in a pushy way at all; it’s not Roma’s style. She’s got kind of a cool vibe and doesn’t try to tell anybody what to do. She stayed in loving space all the time. But, no question; it’s a God’s-plan thing.”

The two married in April 2007. That same year, Roma approached Mark about bringing the story of the Bible to television in an epic and intimate way. The couple had watched Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 version of
The Ten Commandments
with their teenagers, who commented on what they felt were dated graphics and a hokey representation of the story. Mark agreed with Roma that there was an opportunity to create an updated series that would appeal to all age groups and portray the Bible as God’s love story to us, not a rule book. They began to reach out to top-tier artists in areas like special effects and musical scoring. Forty biblical scholars were brought in to verify the accuracy of the script. Faith leaders consulted on set. Roma played the role of Mother Mary. The series would cover Genesis to Revelation with five two-hour segments on the History channel.

“The minute we took it out into the world,” Roma says, “there was great resistance initially—that we had lost our minds. There were certain people advising us that we would lose our shirts and our reputations, that we would look foolish. But at that point we were unstoppable.”

And audiences couldn’t stop watching. When
The Bible
aired March 3–31, 2013, it garnered cable television ratings not seen before. Following several subsequent airings, the miniseries received more than one hundred million cumulative views. But those are just numbers.

On the set of
The Bible
, Morocco, 2012
(Photograph by Joe Alblas/© 2012 LightWorkers Media, LLC. All rights reserved.)

While Roma was extremely fulfilled to have spread God’s message of love to so many, she was also gratified to watch the effect that five years of daily immersion in the Bible had on Mark.

“It’s been beautiful to see how his heart has just bloomed in the grace of the Lord,” she says. “There’s just more of him. He’s more available to the range of his own emotions and consequently he’s deeper in connection with God and therefore with everyone.”

As executive producer of blockbuster network television series including
The Voice
and
Shark Tank
, Mark understands how programs move and inspire viewers. But this time,
The Bible
not only inspired countless others, it changed him and his image of God.

“Once you accept Jesus, he’s not going to be taken away from you. He could be disappointed in you, but he’s not going to leave you,” he says. “Once you’ve taken the Hand, you’re in for the long haul.”

In 2013, Roma and Mark produced
Son of God
, a recut (with added scenes) of
The Bible
released in theaters in 2014. Two different networks aired miniseries they produced,
The Dovekeepers
and
A.D.
, a follow-up series to
The Bible
. They are working together on a remake of
Ben Hur
, for release in theaters in 2016.

“It’s a shift, and it’s a shift that’s for the long term,” Mark says of his deepened faith. “What are we going to do with it going forward? Not sure. Maybe our contribution to spreading the light is through media. Maybe we are bridge builders in Hollywood across faith communities. Maybe that’s our path.”

And maybe God does send us angels.

H
aving a place to go—is a home. Having someone to love—is a family. Having both—is a blessing.

NESHAMA ABRAHAM AND ZEV PAISS