Currently playing in theaters and doing well at the box office is Sony Affirm’s faith based film Overcomer, directed by Alex Kendrick, who co-wrote the script with Stephen Kendrick. It is the Kendrick brothers’ sixth film and their second through their subsidiary, Kendrick Brothers Productions. Their previous film War Room was a financial success hitting #1 at the box office with a $67M domestic gross.
Overcomer tells the story of coach John Harrison, whose life changes overnight when his high school basketball team and state championship dreams are crushed under the weight of unexpected news. When the largest manufacturing plant shuts down and hundreds of families leave their town, Harrison questions how he and his family will face an uncertain future. After reluctantly agreeing to coach cross country, Harrison and his wife, Amy, meet an aspiring athlete who’s pushing her limits on a journey toward discovery. Inspired by the words and prayers of a new-found friend, Harrison becomes the least likely coach helping the least likely runner attempt the impossible in the biggest race of the year.
The film stars Alex Kendrick, Priscilla Shirer, Shari Rigby, Cameron Arnett, and introduces Aryn Wright-Thompson.
For Shirer, this is her second film with the Kendrick brothers, having appeared in War Room. She also appeared in the Erwin Brothers’ film I Can Only Imagine, which also was a box office success. As an actress, NY Times bestselling author, mother and international speaker, she seems to be the winning formula for faith based films. In the film, she co-stars as Olivia Brooks, a high school principal with a firm belief in compassion and faith.
Blackfilm.com caught up with Shirer as she spoke about working with the Kendrick Brothers again with this film.
In the last few years you’ve been in three successful films starting with War Room, I Can Only Imagine and now this film. What is the attraction to saying yes to these projects that have done well at the box office?
Priscilla Shirer: I appreciate you asking that. Well, originally, it started because the writers and director of War Room called me and said, “You know, we’re crafting this character. Every time we write for her, we’re thinking to ourselves, ‘what would Priscilla Shire say?’ So we thought, as we finished up writing the script, we were going to call and ask you to do it.” And my initial response was, “Heck, no, I’m not doing that.” I’ve never done it before and I have great respect for actors and actresses who have been trained in this.
So I didn’t take that for granted. But they said, “Priscilla, we really think when you read this, if you’ll just pray about it, read it, you’ll see that it really isn’t outside of your wheelhouse as much as you think it is. It’s just a different genre, but it’s a ministry.” They knew that the ministry was my purpose and what I’ve been doing for the past two years. So when I read the script for War Room, I read what anybody who’s seen that film knows, and that is that that movie was ministry, it was very entertaining, but it was ministry at its core. The movies I have been in since then, I Can Only Imagine and now Overcomer, it’s the same thing. They are ministry. Yes, they’re entertaining. Yes, they’re good quality. But the goal of them really is to draw people to Jesus. I’m game for that. Anyway, the Lord gives me opportunity to do that game for that. So that’s why I chose to be a part of those projects.
So the roles that you’re taking, it’s not so much of a stretch as to who you are as a person.
Priscilla Shirer: That’s exactly right. The goal is something that I would want to share with people whether I was doing it as an author, which I’ve written quite a few books on that topic. Or standing on a platform in front of an audience teaching, I would still want to share the same message, it’s just a different way to share it.
Let’s talk about the character you’re playing in Overcome. Who is she? And how different is she from the roles you’ve taken in the other films?
Priscilla Shirer: Well, in particular, this one is a principal. She’s a principal at a school. I have played administrators at schools before but what I appreciate about this one is that she takes a very particular interest and moviegoers will find out it’s a very personal interest in a particular student. She takes every opportunity she can to sort of look past the nuances of what the student is saying in their conversation, for what might be going on in her heart. And she just takes it upon herself, despite the fact that she’s all professional and polished, and she wants to do a good job as principal, and administrator of this whole thing.
She still thinks her primary goal is to make sure that this young girl is taken care of and looked after. So I love the beautiful picture here of an older woman, taking care of and looking toward the life of a younger woman, particularly as an African American woman, and kind of providing that sense of covering and protection for a younger, younger boy, girl. I love that beautiful picture there and was grateful to be able to portray that in this film.
Being that you’ve worked along with the producers on these movies before, and you’re pretty much their muse, do you have a say in the matter when it comes to the script?
Priscilla Shirer: Yeah, absolutely. Every time we go toward the scene, of course, the skeleton of it is on paper and the words that they’ve written on paper, but they very much asked, “How would you say this, Priscilla, and you know, what would you add here that would make it more authentic to who you are? As a woman as a black woman? culturally, what would this look like for you if you said this, and if anything sounds on natural let’s us know, so that we can tweak it so that it makes it make sense for you.” There’s one scene where my character leave Hannah, the main character, to the Lord her in a prayer. We filmed it rather the way that it was written several times. But then Alex, the director looked out from behind the camera and one of the tapes and said, “Now Priscilla, I want you to not do it the way it was written. I want you to just rehearse in a prayer the way Priscilla will lead somebody in that prayer.” And that’s what I did.
And in the edited version that everybody’s seeing in the theaters now, the one where I am not doing a script; it’s where I’m praying the words that Priscilla would actually pray with someone. There’s a lot of authenticity in the film that I think comes across well on the screen.
What do you think has been the draw to faith based films like War Room, and I Can Only Imagine?
Priscilla Shirer: With War Room, it sort began to change the narrative of what faith based films are and what people can expect when they come films like these. I think part of the reason why it did so well was because finally there was an unapologetic Gospel story that was matched with technical excellence. It used to be even just upwards to a decade ago, if there was a Christian film, we had very low expectations. We assumed it was going to be a B level quality and that the acting was going to be poor. That the story was not going to be well developed, or it’s going to be a little bit cheesy.
That was the expectation. War Room changed that dynamic. I think, not only will the the technical excellence and the unapologetic Gospel story, but also because the diversity. War Room was the first time that black people who are Christian saw themselves in the film. We used to be able to just appreciate maybe the story and admire the story, but we didn’t see ourselves in it because we were on the screen. Here we had a whole black family. We had Miss Clara, who was everybody’s grandmother. And so we saw ourselves and our family and our experiences in prayer, that passion in prayer that Miss Clara prayed or that Elizabeth Jordan prayed. That was up. We saw ourselves. And so for the first time, it’s sort of brought us into the experience. That’s why i think that it did so well.
Are you getting more offers to do films? What are you interested in?
Priscilla Shirer: There have been a lot of scripts that have passed my desk that are not necessarily ministry related, that would just be a job in film. I have too much respect and admiration for actors and actresses that are trained in that skill to take to take those roles. I want to just kind of stick with the wheelhouse of ministry that I know is my purpose. We got too far too few hours on planet earth to not use them for the passions and purposes that God has assigned to us, so I want to be real careful about that. But at the same time, you are right, there have been opportunities that have opened up for me to be able to minister to people that may never pick up a book that I would write or they never come to a big conference, I might speak at a women’s conference, they would never come to that. But now because they saw the movie, either the movie itself ministered to them, or it brought them an awareness of me. And then by virtue of that, they go to the bookstore and say, “Let me get this book that this girl wrote that I don’t know anything about her except she was in that film.” And then the door is open for an opportunity for them to be kind of introduced to other spiritual principles that can really change the trajectory of their life. I’m so grateful to the Lord for using films like these in that way to reach people who might otherwise I might not have an opportunity to reach.
How was working with the cast?
Priscilla Shirer: Working with the folks that work on films like these, it is a little bit different than other sort of Hollywood sets. That’s what I heard from a lot of the cast and crew that do this for a living. The directors of this film overcome, who also directed warm. These guys are serious about their faith. They’re not just industry guys. These guys are actually preachers who are using film to share the message of the gospel. Every single day, cast and crew comes together for devotions while we’re filming. It doesn’t matter if you work behind the camera, or in front of the camera, if you’re a makeup artist, or if you are part of the creative team, or producer; everybody comes together, we have devotions. Before particular scenes in the film while we’re filming, they will pause and say, “Hey, y’all, let’s gather together and pray over this one.”
Because this could be a scene where someone at a theater actually maybe makes a decision to follow Jesus. And so because of that, you can’t be in that kind of environment with people for the course of months and weeks, and not have a personal relationship that develops with them. So it’s not just like we’re working together. We’re working hard 13 hours a day to film something like this. But beyond that, there is a personal connection that goes beyond just the creation of a project and seeing it through to the end. So we’re very much still connected. We care about each other’s families. We continue to be mindful of things that are going on in each other’s lives. We we’ve been praying for each other. We filmed this a year ago, it so for us, it’s been over a year since we made this project and we’re still very much connected very much aware of each other’s lives, and we would consider ourselves to be friends.
What is your day job?
Priscilla Shirer: I will tell you that my day job is that I am a wife to Jerry Shirer for 20 years, and I am a mother of three boys. I say that as my daytime job because the goal of every day of my life is trying to figure out how to cook chicken a different way for dinner tonight to feed these three growing boys who have an appetite that can’t seem to be satiated. So between writing and studying and teaching and every now and then getting the privilege to make a film, really every day is just filled with the joy of and the challenge of raising teenage sons. That’s my full time job and I’m enjoying every minute of it.
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