Bear Grylls takes The Chosen into the Utah desert and keeps the tone less punishing than his reputation suggests. Luke Dimyan, who plays Judas Iscariot, is among the cast members put through survival tasks while the pair talk about faith without making it feel staged.
280 million people worldwide have watched The Chosen, which began as a crowdfunded project in 2017. That scale gives this crossover more reach than a typical side project, and it turns a niche survival format into a broader test of how far a faith-based drama can travel outside its core audience.
Luke Dimyan at 10,000ft
10,000ft is where Dimyan skydove onto the canyon trail, then blurted, “That’s amazing!” and “I thought I was going to die!” His self-description as a worried person fits the scene neatly: “I worry a lot! I’m constantly worried!”
Luke Dimyan also said his father once told him to “Get paid!” and “Be safe!” when he wanted to act, and that his parents now say, “We’re glad we were wrong!” He calls Jesus “Acceptance,” and adds, “He saw people and allowed them to be the best versions of themselves … if you love people unabashedly, they will take that chance.”
Bear Grylls and scorpions
Ziplining across chasms, filtering water through socks and rappelling down cliffs keep the series in survival mode, but Grylls softens the usual macho edge by treating the encounter as conversation as much as ordeal. He says he lets scorpions go these days unless he is “really desperate to eat,” which is a long way from pure brinkmanship.
He and Dimyan also handle faith in an unembarrassed way, and that matters because the show’s reach now sits well beyond its original 2017 crowdfunding base. Dallas Jenkins’ series has already built the audience; this format gives it another route into attention without changing the core identity of The Chosen.
The Chosen in the Wild
The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls works because it treats belief as part of the action rather than a lecture after the action. That gentler approach is the real shift here, and it should help the series travel further if the rest of the cast appearances keep the same balance of physical risk and plainspoken faith.
