Kristen Bell & Brian Cox Blindsided By Their Casting In A Jesus-Themed Fox News Podcast
A bunch of actors including Kristen Bell and Brian Cox have rushed to clarify they are not involved in a new podcast produced by Fox News, after the network announced them on the cast without their knowledge.
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It all kicked off earlier this week when the new audiobook The Life of Jesus Christ Podcast was announced by Fox’s Christian-themed vertical, Fox Faith.
The audiobook, which spans 52 episodes, promised to guide listeners through the “life, teachings, and miracles of Jesus Christ”, with each episode introduced by popular Fox News anchor Ainsley Earhardt.
The splashy announcement included big names apparently attached to voice the characters in each episode, including Bell as Mary Magdalene, Cox as the Voice of God, Sean Astin as Matthew, Malcolm McDowell as Caiaphas, and Neal McDonough as Jesus, among others.
But a spanner was thrown in the works when the celebs came forward to say they were blindsided by the announcement. Turns out they had lent their voices to a different project 15 years ago, titled The Truth and Life Dramatised Audio Bible and released in 2010.
When Fox News acquired that project via a licensing deal, the network moved to repurpose it into the new podcast with the original voice cast intact, completely unbeknownst to the actors.
Bell, known for her roles in Gossip Girl and Frozen, confirmed to multiple outlets via her reps that she was shocked to hear her name attached to the Jesus-themed podcast. She said she recorded the original audio over a decade ago and only discovered her unwilling involvement a day before Fox Faith made the announcement.
Meanwhile, Succession star Cox was similarly taken aback by his casting reveal. Per The Guardian, his reps said the actor was “unaware that the audio would be repurposed for a new podcast series”. Adding to the chorus of confusion, McDowell’s team said the actor “found out when everybody else did”.
The whole fiasco is particularly juicy given the comments some of the actors have made about right-wing news media like Fox in the past. In 2021, Cox — who portrayed a Rupert Murdoch-inspired owner of a massive news corporation in Succession — described Fox News as “the devil”.
For his part, McDowell actually portrayed Murdoch in the 2019 film Bombshell, which told the story of the sexual harassment cases against real-life Fox News founder Roger Ailes.
Fox News responded to the confusion by telling Rolling Stone that the new podcast was going ahead with the “full cooperation and participation by all the actors involved”.
For now it seems the voices of Bell, Cox and the rest of the cast will be heard when The Life of Jesus Christ Podcast begins its episode rollout on November 30… whether they like it or not.
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