Based on the worldwide best-selling book series by Karen Kingsbury, THE BAXTERS is a riveting family drama that follows Elizabeth and John Baxter and their five adult children. Roma Downey stars as the mom and it was a role she prayed about before accepting.
We talked with the former Touched By An Angel star and powerhouse producer about developing this series and the full circle prediction of the author’s father. Plus the beauty in seeing a family of faith always turn to prayer whether they are in a high season or battling a low.
Interviewed for Family Entourage
Family Entourage: It’s so great to see you. Thank you so much for taking the time today to talk about the Baxters! I’ve been so excited to see this series come to screen. I know it’s the beloved books by Karen Kingsbury, and my kids even have the children’s versions of The Baxters, so talk to me about what it looked like kind of bringing this from book to screen.
Roma Downey: I came to the project as a fan of the book. A friend had given me the first book, Redemption. I couldn’t put it down. I mean, it was such a page turner. Her characters are so rich, the plot lines are so intense and you just want to know what happens. And so I saw it as a visual in my mind. I thought, this needs to be a TV series. And she has 27 of these books. So imagine in success, The Baxters TV series could run forever. But ever since my days on Touched by an Angel, people have been asking me — because I’ve been mostly producing since then — when are we going to get another show like Touched by an Angel on the air? And so when I read this book, I thought, you know what? This could fill that void in TV programming.
I’m going to reach out to Karen Kingsbury and I’m going to ask her if she would let me have the rights to the book to bring it to TV. And that’s what I did. And there was such a God moment in that because when I reached out to her, she said, you’re not going to believe this Roma. She said, 15-20 years ago when I wrote the first book, my father read it and he said, you should reach out to that Roma Downey from Touched by an Angel to bring this book to the screen. Fifteen years before I reached out to her. So there was such a kind of serendipity. We just felt that was like a sign. And she entrusted me with the book series, and it takes time to get something together like this. I found writers and producer of casting. It was great fun.
I wanted to find a group of actors that had physical resemblance because I want you, the audience to believe that everybody’s related to each other. But it was Karen who said to me, Roma, she said, why don’t you step into playing Elizabeth Baxter yourself? I said, oh, I’d need to pray about that. I don’t know that I wanted to be back on screen. But anyway, here I am. And yes, I did, and I had great fun. I stepped into the role of Elizabeth Baxter. She’s loving, she’s compassionate. She’s a prayer warrior. She’s feisty when anybody might be circling that might hurt her children. But I love, there are scenes in here where we see her and her husband, John played so well by Ted McGinley, just worried about their kids and saying, let’s, can we just pray for them right now? And they stop and they pray.
And as remarkable as it seems, because there are so many Christians in our country, we never get to see that on a TV show. And I just think that people of faith everywhere, it will be very meaningful to see a family praying, a church going family where it’s not laid on top. It’s just inherent to who they are. That’s not to say that people who don’t share faith won’t enjoy the series. I think there’s something for everybody. These are not perfect people living perfect lives. It is just that when life brings them to their knees while they’re down there, they pray and that helps them get back up again.
FE: I appreciated that about the series because I felt like it was reflective of a Christian family. You’ve got some that are super solid and others that are shaky. And when things happen, you call your parents or you decide to pray.
RD: Some of them are running towards God and some of them are running away from God. And you see that in families. Families are praying that other family members will return to the fold and everybody’s living their own lives. We really see represented here. I think you will relate to the characters. Somebody will see somebody that they recognize. It’ll remind them of somebody they love.
FE: And talk to me about the choice. I really appreciated, and liked, that each episode starts off with a thematic verse. Talk to me about that decision.
RD: We felt that we could find a verse, it would just tie it back in…it’s biblical-based and the themes are biblical-based of forgiveness, and we get our strength from the words. So it felt like we just wanted to bless each of those episodes and sort of anchor it for our audience that that’s sort of the theme that we could tie it back in. And anyway, it was bold, but we know that there’s an audience for it. We know that she, being Karen has such a big fan base for her books. We know that there are people, the length and breadth of the country.
I mean, I remember back in about 10 years ago now when my husband, Mark [Burnett] and I wanted to make a series about the Bible, and at the time, many people said to us, oh, don’t be doing that. Nobody wants to watch the show about the Bible on television. And it turned out over a hundred million people wanted to watch a show about the Bible. And I think that sometimes in Hollywood, people underestimate that there are so many people who believe. The length and breadth of our country, and that we’re not some little cult somewhere… we’re the people that live next door, we’re the people that work in the shop, we’re people that watch TV, and it’s about time we got to see ourselves in TV programming.
FE: Each kind of child has a different personality and a different relationship with each other and with the parents. And this first season, so to speak, focuses on Ali. Will we continue to see more and more of the children’s stories unfold?
RD: The first season deals with Kari – played Beautiful by Ali Cobrin – and we get to see the other kids in and out, but sort of her storyline is the driving force. And then we’ll move into Ashley Baxter’s storyline and then Luke Baxter’s. And that’s how Karen wrote the books that each book kind of follows a main storyline, “A” storylines we call it, with sort of “B” and “C” running alongside of it. So the cast, I can’t speak highly about this young cast, and they brought such energy and such enthusiasm, and I know they’re all pretty excited.
FE: I’m excited for audiences to going to meet The Baxters and Amazon Prime is the best place for them to be able to see that. So it will be an exciting Spring. Thank you so much, Roma.
The first three seasons of The Baxters are now streaming on Prime Video
