The Era of Pastor Chris Pratt is Upon Us

Chris Pratt, velociraptor wrangler and worst of the famous Chrises, paid The Late Show with Stephen Colbert a visit Thursday night to promote his forthcoming animated blockbuster, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. Except he didn’t actually mention the movie until six minutes and 48 seconds into a 10-minute interview, which he mostly spent talking about his love of farming and church. Chris Pratt is, like, very into church, and you will hear about it!!

Colbert inquired about Pratt’s diet, the Daniel Fast, styled after the Bible and very popular with evangelicals, which Pratt’s been very vocal about. He said, “The Daniel Fast, this is something I did in January this year, I just came off it a few days ago. It’s a 21-day fast. A lot of people are doing it. I did it through my church. It’s based on Daniel,” Colbert cuts in, recognizing that not everyone in the world is familiar with the Bible and asks “The Book of Daniel?”

Pratt answers:

“The Book of Daniel, the prophet, from the Old Testament. The Book of Daniel, he was a guy who only ate fruits, vegetables and grains. He didn’t have any leavened breads. He didn’t have any animal products. I was inspired by my pastor. It’s kind of like our lent—give something up. For 21 days I had no meat, no sugar, no alcohol and it was actually amazing.”

Then Colbert asks Pratt if he ever feels like he’s in “a lion’s den.” He responds:

“Yes. I suppose I do. If you guys haven’t read the Book of Daniel, go check it out, it’s pretty cool. You know, he lives. I need to get better at promoting things. I just recently—and I wish I could remember who this quote is by, I’m going to post it after this because the name has slipped my mind right now—there’s this great quote that I actually heard in church that felt really appropriate, which was: ‘If the spotlight that’s shining on you is brighter than the light that comes from within you, it’ll kill you.’ And you see it all the time. People in our position, people that are actors, you see it a lot. It’s this real bright spotlight… Sometimes just having a self to share is what kills you because there’s nothing left.”

Pratt gestures to the stage lights, “So you have to have a light to share, that’s just as bright as any of these lights,” and pauses while the audience laughs at him (???). He continues, “Then you can survive. Then you can save some of yourself and then you can survive.”

I can’t remember the last time—if ever?—I heard a celebrity speak in detail about their personal religious practices on secular late night television, literally “promoting” a specific holy text and quoting a pastor. These were lengthy remarks—not simple asides but deeply felt suggestions.

Pratt, who recently became engaged to Katherine Schwarzenegger, met his future wife through her mother Maria Shriver via their mutual church—Hillsong, which is also frequented by some Kardashian-Jenners, Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin. I know this because it is well-documented that Chris and Katherine love Jesus and God is the reason they decided to become betrothed six months after meeting. Also, they’re going to have a super religious wedding.

I’ll let Ellen Page, who just last week used her time on Colbert to urge viewers to connect the dots between homophobic rhetoric and physical violence, to take it away from here: