Actor Who Played Peter in "Son of God" Talks About "God Moments" in the Movie and Why He Gave Up a Medical Career for Acting

Dan Wooding : Jun 2, 2014
Assist News Service

"Peter is to me, the most interesting of the apostles, because he's so human. He regularly fails, yet he's got incredible heart. It's not like playing Jesus, who is the perfect individual." -Darwin Shaw

(Los Angeles, CA)—British-born actor, Darwin Shaw, has revealed that he gave up a promising medical career as a surgeon in London, England, to become an actor, and recently starred as the Apostle Peter in "The Bible" mini-series and the subsequent "Son of God" movie.

During a visit to Los Angeles recently, I was able to talk with Shaw, the eldest of two boys, who was born in Brampton, Cumbria, England, where his grandfather was the local vicar, and a relation of Major-General Orde Charles Wingate, a legendary British Army officer known for creating special military units in Palestine in the 1930s, and in Abyssinia, Sudan and Burma during World War II.

Shaw, I discovered, grew up in the Yorkshire city of Leeds, where his mother was a social worker and nurse and his father worked as a special needs teacher and race relations advisor for the BBC.

He attended King's College, London, where he graduated as a medical doctor, and worked as a surgeon and for a time as an emergency room doctor. He got a degree in tropical medicine, which was hardly surprising as he is of mixed parentage, and spent times in the tropics. His father was born in Amritsar, a city in north-western part in India, which is the spiritual center for the Sikh religion, and his father's parents were from Kashmir and Afghanistan. His mother, however, is British.

Dawin's interest in tropical medicine developed when he decided to explore India in 1998 while still a medical student, and he rode across India on an Enfield Bullet bike. He pedaled on his three-month-long adventure, from Delhi through Rajasthan and then, down to Karnataka.

But then, as he medical career began to blossom, he suddenly gave it all up to start a new career as an actor. Why?

"Because of the experience of growing up in my twenties in London, I was around a lot of musicians and realized that my creative side wasn't being totally fulfilled," Shaw told me. "So I was torn really between this feeling of doing something worthwhile, and also between being creative at the same time.

"I got my surgical job, but then had a six month career break away from London and during that time, a friend gave me a book on creativity and while I was there I started reading it and then following some of the exercises in it. I ended up in an acting class, and I was on stage for the first time and I just knew pretty much immediately there was no going back now it was something beyond my conscious control. Obviously, logic and sense would say 'you're crazy', but I knew in my heart this was a journey I wanted to explore."

"I managed to get an audition to play Adam in the story of creation and the guy there basically thought I was perfect for the role and I flew straight to Cape Town, South Africa, to be in the film. It was very fulfilling and an incredible first experience of suddenly being in front of a camera with a proper film crew."

"Now, after the doctor/surgeon-turned actor, had made a whole succession of movies and appeared on stage in many plays, he got the role of the Apostle Peter in the "Bible" miniseries produced by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, which became a huge hit on The History Channel, and which continued in the hit, "Son of God" movie.

What was it about Peter that attracted him, because he always sort of seemed to be in trouble?

"Peter is, to me, the most interesting of the apostles, because he's so human," said Darwin Shaw. "This simple fisherman had an incredible journey. You read in the Book of Acts, that he's doing miracles himself, and beyond the Bible, you discover that he ends up fighting Nero and a great Basilica is built in honor of him in Rome. He regularly fails, yet he's got incredible heart.

"It's not like playing Jesus, who is the perfect individual. It is seeing Peter's vulnerability and then overcoming his weaknesses and learning from them is what attracted me to him."

Darwin then spoke about the time when he was playing opposite Portuguese actor, Diogo Morgado, who starred as Jesus in the miniseries and the movie, and it came time to shoot a scene with Nicodemus and suddenly something rather interesting happened.

"We were in an olive grove [in Morocco] which we used to get the Gethsemane scenes, and also this particular scene where the disciples were camping outside of Jerusalem and Nicodemus comes to see Jesus to find out more about Him. He had obviously heard Jesus preaching and he had seen something very special in Him, but he's a Pharisee and he doesn't want to be seen in public, so he comes secretly," he said.

"It was one of those mornings and we'd been up since 4:30 am, already on set to prepare for the sunrise and it was one of those beautiful still nights on the edge of the desert and you could just hear the sounds of little insects and there was not a breeze in the air, and it was dark but the sun was just starting to come up.

"In the scene, Nicodemus asks Jesus [Diogo] about being born again and the line comes about 'the wind blows where it will' and as Diogo says this line, suddenly we just all hear this the breeze picking up and the trees, the leaves in the trees start fluttering and you can actually see on the clip of the actual scene Jesus' hair, the wind starting to blow through it and you just stop and breathe in this fresh air and Jesus looks at Nicodemus and he just smiles and says 'the wind blows where it will.'

"It was a beautiful moment. Probably, [most] people wouldn't notice it and they probably assumed that it was like a wind machine, but it was one of these lovely things that happens on a set sometimes that's quite magical. Everyone just looked at each other and smiled knowing we had captured something very special there."

What do you hope people will take away from your particular role in the film?

"I think Peter, as I said before, was very much the most human of all the disciples. Even though, the story is set 2,000 years ago, I think everybody can understand his journey because we all have made mistakes, and we've all fallen. I think culturally, Peter was in some ways old fashioned for the time. Here was Jesus who was a revolutionary bringing new ideas and Peter was very much a man of his time from a small village probably never went more than ten miles from where he was born. Yes, I think we can all be very stuck in our ways and closed