"Beauty will save the world," once wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Catholic actor/producer David Henrie's new docuseries for EWTN+ seeks to prove the point.
Henrie became known to TV audiences in such comedy series as Disney's Wizards of Waverly Place and CBS' How I Met Your Mother -- and he's currently star and executive producer of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place on Disney+ -- but his latest venture, Seeking Beauty With David Henrie, sends him in search, not of laughs, but transcendently beautiful things and places.
Season one visits Italy; season two is already in production, this time in Spain.
The series premiered on Jan. 19 with the first two episodes, in which Henrie tours Vatican City and Rome, on Catholic network EWTN's new streaming service.
But on Jan. 16, it had its official premiere at the Caruso Catholic Center, including the Our Savior Parish church, at USC in Los Angeles, and Sophia Sariego, one of our blog contributors, was on hand.
She writes:
The first season takes audiences on a vacation seeking the Divine, highlighting the art, architecture, and historic Catholic culture of Italy. Masterful cinematography transports glowing mountains and gleaming chapels into your living room. The production value is excellent, and Henrie's charming, down-to-earth persona engagingly brings out the best from the craftsmen and artists he encounters.
The premiere was well attended by big names in Catholic film and media to discover how beauty leads us to more deeply contemplate the divine. Deacon Charlie Echeverry, as emcee, led attendees to ponder the role beauty plays in our lives as Catholics, and introduced Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles for an opening prayer.
The Caruso Catholic Center’s pastor, Father Matthew Wheeler, spoke about how truth, goodness, and beauty are each tools for evangelization, building on each other. He emphasized beauty's ability to "wound the heart" with a desire to more deeply understand and experience truth and God's goodness.
Henrie had been baptized Catholic as a child but had fallen away from the Faith. He had success, but he didn't feel fulfilled. Then he visited a beautiful place in Southern California's Orange County.
From Catholic World Report:
Henrie told OSV News that he was 22 when he visited St. Michael’s Abbey for confession. Friend and fellow actor Kevin James recommended the abbey and gave Henrie a ride from Los Angeles. Henrie remembered the date: Jan. 1, 2012.
“I didn’t just go anywhere for my conversion, and I wasn’t even directly seeking it,” Henrie said of the abbey. “It was at the most beautiful place, a place that you can really feel God … beauty was right there, knocking on my door.”
At the abbey, he met some of the first [Norbertine] priests who became his friends, he said. One of them later helped marry him and Maria.
“That special place left a mark on me, and I still go back to visit all the time with my wife and children,” Henrie said.
Earlier this week, I spoke to Henrie about working in entertainment in general, and Seeking Beauty With David Henrie in particular. The whole video interview is posted below, but here are some excerpts.
To say Catholics or Christians shouldn't be in Hollywood is like saying St. Peter should have never went to Rome. Rome was a very dangerous place, it was very hostile, it was literally killing anyone who is Christian, and more hostile than Hollywood. And, he still went. And they all went.
We now have what we have today, because they didn't have that fear-based mentality. You know, we've never retreated from entering the cultural conversation, ever. So, I think, absolutely, we need to be trying to empower our artists to go succeed in Hollywood without compromising themselves.
And also, build parallel tracks where you can, and experiment with new distribution, and there's wonderful opportunities popping up now with many different platforms, like EWTN+ and others.
So, that being said, you know, as parents, we do have to be vigilant. We have to be protective over our children's eyes and make sure that they're watching things that we feel comfortable over. I think there's been a lot made in the past 10 years that we're not comfortable with our children watching.
But I think that's changing. You're definitely seeing that tendency shift now; you're seeing a lot more good content come out.
So, yeah, I think we've never been a retreatist Faith. We've always been on the offense, and I think we need to keep that up.
EWTN+ came to me with the idea of wanting to do a travel show that's similar to, like, Stanley Tucci's travel show, his food show, or, like, an Anthony Bourdain, but in the realm of culture. And that resonated with me immediately.
As I've gotten older, I've continually grown to fall in love with just beauty, that part of the transcendentals. I love beauty in particular because it goes against my earlier nature.
Like, growing up, I just didn't care for beauty, I thought it was something soft or effeminate, and especially growing up in America, you're raised with this mentality that beauty is a cost that can be cut.
It's something that if you got some money left over in the budget, you can doll up this or doll up that. It was always left out of the conversation, and getting to go and experience these old cultures and learn the opposite mentality, boy, was I so wrong.
And I love looking at my younger self and going, you idiot, you're missing out on the whole thing, and I learned lessons about that, you know, and it helps me grow as a person.
We wanted to make a fun travel show where you go deeper. You go deeper on beauty, you go deeper on culture, you ask why. Why would someone build this old building that would… they wouldn't even see in their lifetime, and their kids wouldn't see in their lifetime, and their kids' kids wouldn't see in their lifetime?
Why do they do these things? And you understand the faith of the people, and the thought and reason that goes into building these things. And it's just profound, and it's beautiful.
Beauty is not something only for the rich, beauty is something for anyone, in any time, in any place. All of us can invite beauty into our own life.
Here's the whole thing:
Images: EWTN+
Kate O’Hare, a longtime entertainment journalist, is Social Media Content Manager and Blog Editor at Family Theater Productions.
'Wake Up Dead Man': 2 Priests on the Catholic-Themed Netflix Mystery
PRAY: THE STORY OF PATRICK PEYTON Comes to EWTN
Minno Streaming: 7 Standout Faith-and-Learning TV Series for Kids
Keep up with Family Theater Productions on our website, Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.