George Xanthis is known to millions of The Chosen fans as the biblical character John the Apostle. As the intensely popular show gears up for its fifth season, the health evangelist sat down with M&F to discuss his evolution with fitness and how he continues to make glorious gains on and off set.
Xanthis has never been a stranger to hard work. Born in Sydney, Australia, the actor of Greek descent chose to progress his burgeoning career by making the move to Hollywood in 2018. He’s appeared as John Travolta in the Olivia Newton-John based mini-series Hopelessly Devoted to You, and as Frank Capone in The Making of the Mob: Chicago, but he’s most known for taking up the legend of Christ’s disciple, John, in the epic series The Chosen. Xanthis is multi-talented and has a background in stand-up comedy and producing, but perhaps his biggest love is fitness.
After moving to LA, Xanthis set about getting into his best possible shape by signing up with Ultimate Performance. Xanthis’ first coach was a former bodybuilder who got him started on eating clean with lean meals like the tried and tested staple of boiled chicken breast and broccoli. His next trainer would become a source of expertise when it came to setting reachable targets and tracking his macros while allowing himself to be flexible to sustain the course. A third trainer would consolidate what he had already learned and introduce the idea that the actor should find what he enjoys in the gym and really focus on it.
“We really worked on my chest in terms of working out,” he recalls. “And that’s when I learned that I really like the free weight stuff.”
As a busy actor, learning to work with free weights has meant that Xanthis doesn’t necessarily rely on machines or cables, and can workout anywhere, including hotel rooms or between takes. It’s a lesson that he’s keen to pass on to aspiring actors who are trying to juggle their own auditions with arm days.
George Xanthis
How George Xanthis Stays in Shape Between Scenes of ‘The Chosen’
The star is a huge proponent of adding both push and pull to his workouts and rather than separating them out into different sessions, he combines push and pull into supersets of two exercises so that if he finds himself being called to a shoot, he doesn’t end up in a situation where either the push or pull is dominating his week. “So, if I’m doing an incline push (like a dumbbell chest press), I just follow up with a dumbbell row on the inclined bench,” he sensibly explains.
Xanthis also likes to combine decline pushups with pullups in his supersets and loves to end his workouts with punishing eight-minute ab sessions that he replicates from YouTube. “You’re doing eight versions of a crunch,” he says. “You think you’re doing so many different things but it’s just a fun way to attack every area of the abs.”
The actor, who plays Saint John, shares that Jonathan Roumie, who plays Christ on the show, was a buddy on his MyFitnessPal app so that they could check each other’s progress with hitting their calorie and macro targets. Even off set, Xanthis can’t escape being accountable to Jesus! On-set, the cast’s shared love of staying in shape has bonded them forever.
Dallas Jenkins, who is the creator and director of The Chosen, the most successful series of all time to be kicked off through crowd funding, has got the rest of the team passing their time on a horizontal bar that makes up part of the studio.
“It is so sturdy that it’s become like the pseudo, pull up bar on set,” shares Xanthis. “So, Dallas will often, as he’s thinking about a scene, he’ll chew the heck out of the edge of his pen. He’s almost inhaling ink by the end of it, but as he’s thinking, he’ll pop up, and he’ll do chin ups, and then Shaha (Shaha Isaac plays Simon Peter) will pop up and do chin ups, and then the crew, and then I’ll pop up. So, we have a chin up bar on our set!”
It’s just as well that the gang are all making gains, because series 5 of The Chosen, titled “Last Supper” is set to be epic with cinema releases for Part 1 on March 28, Part 2 on April 4, and Part 3 on April 11. The previous four seasons are available to stream now.
“We’ve got a very passionate fan base,” says Xanthis. “And I think that the show has done a great job of positioning itself as an historical drama. I mean, obviously, our creators are very passionate about the story that they’re telling.” Since The Chosen is constrained by making the most of its budget, there are no Marvel-esque personal trainers here, but Xanthis is able to pursue his love of fitness while working with likeminded people on an extremely successful project, and that sounds divine!
