Mark Wahlberg, the brother of St. Charles resident Donnie Wahlberg, is starring in an inspiring new movie based on the true story of boxer-turned-priest Father Stuart Long.
God wanted a fighter and He found one. @MarkWahlberg stars in the inspiring true-life story, Father Stu. Exclusively in movie theaters this Easter. #FatherStuMovie pic.twitter.com/m2DHiJuAki
— FatherStuMovie (@FatherStuMovie) February 10, 2022
The movie is scheduled to be released in theaters on April 13.
In the movie, Wahlberg portrays Long, who, after a career in boxing didn’t work out, moved from Montana to Los Angeles to try to become a movie star. After a near-fatal accident, Long became a priest.
While in seminary, doctors diagnosed Fr. Stu with inclusion body myositis after removing a fist-sized tumor from his hip. The rare inflammatory disease causes muscle damage and weakness. The disease caused the slowing down of his body, even at his 2007 ordination.
Fr. Stu died in 2014 at the age of 50.
Actor and director Mel Gibson also stars in the film, playing the role of Fr. Stu’s father.
(Continued from Part I)
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your own faith journey and do you see any parallels with Father Stu’s journey? Do you find points where you connect with his journey?
Wahlberg: Yeah, absolutely. I think everything good in my life came from my faith and my dedication, commitment to following and then serving in my own way, and doing what I could do, but especially following and worship. And with him, yeah, I mean, he had gone down that road for a different reason, but then God chose him. So yeah, absolutely. And also in his childhood, in his upbringing and all those things, all the obstacles that he faced and things that he had to overcome.
How’d you learn about this project?
Wahlberg: Oh, it sounds like a bad joke. Go to a restaurant with two priests and have Italian food and a bottle of wine, and then a priest starts pitching me a movie. Normally he’s asking me to help out with something, food drive, some sort of contribution, which is not a problem. And then I’m like, “You’re pitching me a movie, Father?” And then I heard the story for a second time and I was like, “Oh my God, this is absolutely amazing.” So yeah, that’s how it started.
And you were a huge hit in 2017 when you came here to Chicago and you were at (re)ENCOUNTER with the Cardinal. What would you say to young people today and why should they come see this movie?
Wahlberg: Well, I think even young people are feeling the pressures of this world and all of the divide that’s happening. This is something to be experienced in a theater with other people, young and old, to see people laughing and crying. Young people throughout the pandemic, it’d be hard for us to find somebody who didn’t lose somebody to COVID, somebody who didn’t lose a job, a home, something, and just dealing with something that obviously I had never dealt with in my 50 years of being alive. But I think it’s also a nice way to introduce all the wonderful things about faith. I think with all the restrictions and the rules of church can be pretty burdensome for young people, I think. This is not a movie about the church. This is about a guy who committed his life, dedicated his life to serving the Guy who died to build the church. So it’s about the Lord and not the church.
And thankfully now the church is starting to grow and advance and we can continue to encourage them to change and grow in many ways, especially when it comes to including everybody, women making their own decisions, priests being able to be married, whether that’s to a man or a woman. I think those are all things that are important, because we cannot be the ultimate judge. That’s the Lord’s job. So I met a priest who was married and has four kids and he is he’s the pastor at a school in Palm Springs. And he was a deacon before he got married, had four kids, and he petitioned the Holy Father to make him a priest. I think there’s about a hundred of them. And he was a very healthy, happy example. And I think we want to bring people to church, we want to bring people to the vocation of priesthood. Hopefully this movie will also do that, but we also want to make it appealing and see all the wonderful things that come through faith. But we also want to include everybody.
Your parish priest, Father Jim Flavin, was a consultant on the film. How much advice did he give you on playing a priest and how much influence had in your personal life?
Wahlberg: Oh my gosh. He’s known me since I was 13 years old, standing on a street corner, two o’clock in the morning with a beer in my hand, and he’s going, “What the heck are you doing?” But instead of grabbing us by the ear and dragging us home and telling our parents, he’d sit out there with us and talk to us and really befriend us. And when I got in trouble and none of my friends came to see me, but he was always there, and every other step of the way he was there, the good times and the bad times and everything else in between, he really got a kick out of seeing me in a priest uniform. He really was like, “I swore to God I never thought I would see this. This is like…” And he would just chuckle and laugh. But yeah, he’s still a very close friend, confidant to this day. He’s baptized all my kids, buried everybody that we lost, married myself and my wife and all my brothers and sisters who’ve been married. He’s a very, very special individual.
So getting the screenplay right. Trying to get it made and having doors close, which was fine. I didn’t knock on too many. I went to a couple people that I thought would get it. They didn’t, and I just said, “Okay, I just got to do it on my own.” And that was the challenge.
But once we got there, then we had the bigger challenge of shooting the movie because we had very little time. We had five and a half years to get it to the starting gate and only 30 days to shoot it. So that was a big challenge, but we were able to make the best version of the movie and it’s really touching people in a very special and unique way, so we’re excited about that.
Part III of our interview with Wahlberg will be published tomorrow at foxvalleymagazine.com.
