The Variety Faith and Spirituality in Entertainment Honors presented by the Coalition for Faith and Media will be celebrated Dec. 4. The honorees are individuals who are supporting the frequently underrepresented theme of faith in entertainment storytelling. This class of 2024 Visionary Awards presented by CFAM represents diverse portrayals of faith and spirituality that are broadly compelling and nuanced.
“Bob Marley: One Love”
Bob Marley’s fans have long been brought together by joyous songs, but his revolutionary ideas are sometimes overlooked because the music is so uplifting. His son Ziggy Marley says, “In order to better understand Bob’s message you have to look past the legend and see the human being, his struggles, emotionally, spiritually and physically.” The film “Bob Marley: One Love” does just that. It reminds us ofMarley’s courage in pursuit of his mission (dare we call it a vocation?), showing him performing days after an assassination attempt, his painful self-exile to London and the creation of the album “Exodus,” a work of masterpiece. CFAM recognizes this film for shining a light on how Bob Marley’s spiritual beliefs gave him strength, informed his world view and propelled his work for social good through love.
Viola Davis and Julius Tennon
Founders, JuVee Prods.
Davis and Tennon’s relationship began when he invited her to church. They married in 2003 and, in 2011, founded JuVee Prods. “Spirituality and faith are values we hold,” they say. “It is important to us that we always look inward to the humanity of the characters and present who they are within the narrative.” The company’s mission is to upend the idea of “impossible,” empowering a new, inclusive generation of artists, giving established artists a safe place to explore new paths and “subverting classic storytelling with fresh takes.” Among JuVee projects are “Emanuel,” about the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., and the upcoming biopic “Barbara Jordan.”
Erica Lipez
Executive producer, “We Were the Lucky Ones”
Images of “the old country” tend to lean toward the poor, small-town Jews like those in “Fiddler on the Roof,” but European Jewish life before the Holocaust also included sophisticated, urban families. Drawing on Georgia Hunter’s best-selling account of her own family’s struggles during World War II, Lipez and her writing team re-created a vanished world and community in Hulu’s “We Were the Lucky Ones.” The 12 members of the Kurc family, says Lipez, “all have a different relationship to their culture, faith and spirituality.” Over nine years, they’re scattered by war, but at the end, “they miraculously reunite around the Passover table… forever altered, but bound together by love, humanity and the shared rituals of their religion and history.”
Arian Moayed
Actor, writer, director, philanthropist
A nominee for numerous awards, including Tonys (“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” “A Doll’s House”) and Emmys (“Succession”), Moayed stays busy giving back to his adopted home of New York. Born in Iran and raised in the Midwest, he has taught in New York City schools for more than 20 years and is co-founder of Waterwell, a community-organizing and education company in Gotham. He’s been a consistent voice calling for accurate Muslim inclusion and is outspoken about the importance of spirituality in his work. “Spirituality guides all of us toward the collective rather than the individualistic, pushing community over everything else,” he says. “It pushes us to ask big, universal questions that resonate with people of all faiths, people of all backgrounds.”
Jessica Matten
Actor, writer
Matten (“Dark Winds,” “Rez Ball”) has ancestors from two ethnic groups Hollywood has often denigrated: Canada’s First Nations on one side and Chinese on the other. Over her career as an actor and writer, Matten has raised her voice on behalf of Indigenous peoples, taken direct action on their behalf and consistently taken roles that portray them positively. She is a co-founder of Counting Coup Indigenous Film Academy, which trains filmmakers in the Siksika Nation. “It’s beyond a deeply moving spiritual practice in itself to help another soul,” she says. “I am grateful that my portrayals have given me the space to re-enact aspects of what I actually have been doing for the last 20 years of my life … to help progress the healing of our people for a better future.”
Sheryl Lee Ralph
Actor, producer, director
A beloved figure for both her work and her activism, Ralph has been Emmy nominated three times (winning once) for her role on “Abbott Elementary” as a devoutly Christian kindergarten teacher. “I cherish the opportunity to bring depth, dignity and authenticity to the portrayal of ‘Abbott Elementary’s’ Barbara Howard, a woman of faith, reminding viewers of the strength, resilience, and hope that such a character embodies in everyday life,” Ralph says. She also has manifested love through decades of AIDS activism, from founding the DIVA in 1990, to supporting Project Angel Food, to producing the recent Daytime Emmy-nominated short “Unexpected” about two HIV positive women who become activists.
Jay Shetty
Author, entrepreneur, podcaster
Shetty’s path was always spiritual. As a boy, he spent summers with Hindu monks, and after business school, he spent three years as a monk himself. But his true calling was to merge the teachings he’d absorbed with digital communications. He started with YouTube videos, and in 2019, launched his podcast, “On Purpose With Jay Shetty,” which now boasts more than 35 million monthly downloads. His entrepreneurial projects include House of 1212, a purpose-driven talent and brand agency, and Juni sparkling tea drinks. “It fills me with so much hope that audiences are choosing to watch and listen to deep, meaningful and thoughtful discussions and that we have made mental health a mainstream cultural conversation,” he says.
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