David Hunter On New Podcast Jesus Christ Supercast

BWW catches up with David Hunter to chat about his new podcast Jesus Christ Supercast with Tim Prottey-Jones.

What is Jesus Christ Supercast?

It's a podcast ten years on from being on Andrew Lloyd Webber's Superstar where he searched for Jesus, me and Tim Prottey Jones who met on the show decided to rewatch it all and mark the decade since it happened.

We felt like someone should mark it and there are some 'where are they now articles' so we thought we'd jump on it and relive it a bit and have a chat and some laughs. It's been really nice to watch it again but without all the pressure of being a contestant in it. We can watch ourselves a bit more critically and say "oh I finished in the right place, I was never going to win that" or "I was really good in that bit!". You can just be slightly less emotional about it.

Have you rewatched it in advance to prepare for the podcast?

Yes, I rewatched every episode and I made notes! Just so I can talk about it all at length. Also just watching it and seeing which memories flooded back. We were working on it, we were locked in the Jesus house for six weeks in secret as nobody knew who the finalists were. We worked on and rehearsed all of the songs we would need if we were to reach the final and we had all that time was crammed into an hour of telly. So much happened and it was nice to relive it. So yes, I watched every last minute of Superstar again.

It was weird, there were moments where they were revealing who got sent home- and I felt nervous! I knew I wasn't going to go home but they were reading out the names and I was going "oh I hope David gets through, he's my favourite!". I couldn't help being swept up in the drama of it all.

Where can people watch it if they want to watch along?

It's on YouTube. I've put them all together in a Linktree or you can search Superstar ITV and they're all in order. It's very low res but watching along will be a lot of fun. It's funny because we're just releasing it now all together but we've recorded almost all the episodes now and we don't know if people will watch it or just listen or do a bit of both. It's going to be fun to find out!

Is it released weekly?

We're doing it exactly the same as the show. Back then I think they tried to squeeze it in between The Voice and The Olympics. So we have the first night and then a week later it went, night, night, night, night, night one after another. So we're going to release each episode exactly ten years after the night it aired.

What have you both been up to since Superstar?

Well it really launched our careers. For Tim, he was working for a charity in Birmingham and he wrote a lot of musical theatre and had musical theatres singing his songs but he'd never really performed in anything apart from an amateur production of Jesus Christ Superstar. He'd never performed professionally and suddenly he was hurled into Kinky Boots and Once and RENT on tour. He did the arena tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, understudying Judas. So it launched him into a whole new career which is really exciting. He's been in bands as well and is still making music now so it completely changed his life. That old cliche of 'it's going to change my life' and it did!

For me, it was about trying to get up the ladder a little higher. I'd been in auditions and I'd done One Man, Two Guvnors and I'd been in a panto but I found out I was missing out on roles to people who had been in the Joseph programme. I felt like I was always going to miss out to someone with a bit more notoriety. So when the Jesus programme came up I entered it. After that, it felt like they gave me a bit more time in the room and were a bit more happy to see me. As you know it led to Kinky Boots and I got to work with Tim again, Once and Waitress and lots of things in between like Seussical and Tommy in concert. We'll never really know if they'll happen without Superstar. It definitely lit the torch paper.

Where did you and Tim place in Superstar?

Tim came eighth I think and I came fourth.

Is there any competition there?

We faced each other in a sing-off and ultimately I sent him home so there could be some bitterness involved but there's absolutely not! It's nice to do the podcast with Tim because we shared a room on Superstar Island and then in the Jesus house. We were each others support through the whole thing. I think when you see the sing-off episode you can see how strong the friendship is and we're trying to look after each other and smile at each other. It's a shame we were pitted against each other because really neither one of us should have gone home at that point. In my humble opinion.

I'm excited to see what people think about it. We've been chipping away at it for ages. It such a niche thing watching this show from one time in our lives. The nice thing about the podcast is that it begins with the show and kind of grows into whatever it grows into. We end up talking about our worst dance call auditions and various jobs we've had. There was an episode where I was talking to Tim and he had got a mean tweet after one episode. It sent him into a real panic and he struggled during the next few episodes but I had no idea it happened as I was in my own world and doing my own thing. We had this conversation about how people are tweeting and not realising the effect it has. I never intended the episode to go in that direction. Superstar is the root of it and we just go in whatever direction it takes us.

Do you think it would be worse to do Superstar in 2022 with social media the way it is?

We did it at a nice time because Twitter and Instagram were around and we got lots of new followers and it was very exciting. Twitter has certainly changed a lot and is a lot more aggressive. Tim was on Tipping Point a few years later and the abuse he received was out of this world! It was unthinkable, we were on this talent show where we were inviting people to judge us and we didn't receive any abuse whatsoever. Tim went on Tipping Point which is a gameshow where counters fall down due to gravity and he got the most abuse I've seen on Twitter. Not directed at him but just #TippingPoint "who is this bearded idiot", absolute dogs abuse.

I certainly think doing it now I would choose to turn my phone off and not look at my socials. Funnily enough I've gone back and read some reviews of the show that I didn't even spy at the time and we got absolutely battered at the time. Ten years later you can read that and just go "oh well!"

Jesus Christ Supercast is available here.