Interview by Paul Salfen, Text by Christine Thompson for AMFM Magazine
In a world that rarely slows down long enough to listen, Bear Grylls still knows how to make people stop and pay attention. The man who has dragged celebrities through jungles, deserts, and ice for years has now turned his attention to the cast of The Chosen, and the result is something quieter, deeper, and far more personal than pure survival television. The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls drops Jonathan Roumie, Paras Patel, Elizabeth Tabish, Noah James, Luke Dimyan, and series creator Dallas Jenkins into Utah’s Castle Valley, the Canyonlands, the Great Basin Desert, the Colorado River, and the Adirondack Forest. What emerges is not just another adventure series, but a raw conversation about faith, friendship, failure, and the kind of honesty that only surfaces when the cameras keep rolling and the trail gets hard.
In a recent conversation, Grylls made clear that the heart of the show was never the scenery. “I’ve always tried to pursue those things in my life,” he said. “Try and keep the main thing, the main thing.” For him, that means taking people outdoors and talking about the real stuff—family, friendships, faith—while still keeping everyone smiling, moving, and alive. Chasing the Wild, he noted, gave him the freedom to “dial up that faith kind of chat a little bit more.” On Running Wild the spiritual thread appears in seasons; here it runs through the entire series.
Grylls was especially struck by how the experience landed on the actors themselves. Many arrived without deep personal faith, yet the combination of isolation, physical challenge, and open conversation proved transformative. “This show has such a major impact on so many of the actors’ lives,” he said. “And I think that’s the part that people might underestimate… They weren’t all people of faith before… All of them arrived on the show… really honest, ready to kind of talk about some of these struggles and battles. And I really admire and love that honesty in them.”
When asked what advice he would give to people who look at his life and want to tell stories the same way, Grylls was characteristically direct. He does not claim a perfect formula. “Always try to just follow my heart… Find what you really love and go for it. And just fail a bunch and build good people around you and listen to nature and keep faith center in your life. Because you might not need it now… but it will help you.” Life, he reminded the room, is relentlessly humbling. “It might happen when you’re young. It might happen on your deathbed. But all of us get humbled by life… As they say, man is never as tall as when he kneels down. And I’ve learned long ago to kneel and stand tall.”
That single line may be the quiet center of the entire series. In the canyons and forests, under the pressure of real exposure and real conversation, the cast of The Chosen discovered what Grylls has been practicing for years: strength that begins on its knees is the only kind that lasts.
The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls is more than celebrity survival. It is a reminder that the wilderness still has the power to strip away performance and leave people face-to-face with what actually matters—faith, friendship, and the courage to keep going when the path disappears.
