Kevin Costner spoke candidly about his Christian faith after narrating the ABC TV special Kevin Costner Presents: The First Christmas.
In an interview with Deseret News, published on Monday, December 8, Costner, 70, said it was “appropriate” that he served as the two-hour TV special’s narrator given his devout faith.
“I’ve been a part of all kinds of stories, but to be able to narrate the birth of Christ, it seemed appropriate to me, given my history with the church,” Costner said. “I was raised in a church. I haven’t probably proclaimed that to the world, but anybody who knows me, knows that. It’s been so much a part of my life — religion that has spread around this world.”
The outlet stated that Costner’s “first performance” was as a four-year-old in his church’s “annual nativity play” where he played a shepherd and uttered a single line: “Hark.”
In a trailer for the special, which aired on ABC on Tuesday, December 9, Costner asked for audiences to revisit the first Christmas with him. “They say Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. A chance for families to gather together and celebrate the amazing story of a new born king,” Costner tells the camera while seated in a director’s chair. “Whether you’re a believer or just curious about the tradition, journey back with me, Kevin Costner, for the story of the first Christmas like you’ve never seen it before.”
Expanding on his beliefs, the Yellowstone star told the outlet that he believes the story of Jesus Christ is “incredibly special.”
He added, “You choose to believe. I choose to believe — that doesn’t mean I know how to defend it when someone can come at me from different directions.”
The outlet noted that as Costner learned more about the ancient text via his narration role, he was left with “a richer, more profound perspective on the story.”
Costner said, “Imagine the idea that [Mary’s] unwed, she’s pregnant. There’s a level of shame that goes with that. There’s a boy just your same age. Now, there’s also this, this deep-seated fear, because there was always a promise that this person was coming, that would change the world and the idea that as a young girl, that you’re somehow (part of) this whole thing, that had to be overwhelming for them.”
He added that Christmas is a time to remember what the holiday means to so many around the world. “A lot of things get a lot of red and a lot of green, and there’s a lot of lights … sometimes we forget about the story a little bit.”
Costner recently spoke exclusively to Us Weekly about how crucial storytelling is on a universal level. “I think storytelling can be healing,” he told Us on November 12. “It can be informative. It can remind us of who we think we’d like to be.”
He continued at the time, “A lot of times you see great heroism on the screen, sometimes even in the smallest way. And when we see it, we recognize it, and we think to ourselves, I need to be like that. We know what the opposite is. But sometimes we see things in movies that we wish we would have said that we still can.”
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