November 21, 2025
Kristen Bell, Brian Cox, and more celebrities were shocked when they found out that their voices were used in a new podcast.
The Fox News’ star-studded podcast The Life of Jesus will be hosted by Ainsley Earhardt and list actors who’ve previously provided voices for biblical projects.
Bell was announced as Mary Magdalene, Malcolm McDowell as Caiaphas, Neal McDonough as Jesus, John Rhys-Davies as the narrator, Brian Cox as God, Julia Ormond as Mother Mary, Sean Astin as Matthew, Michael York as Luke, Stacy Keach as John and Hill Harper as an angel.
Soon after the podcast was announced, representatives for multiple actors revealed that they didn’t sign onto the project nor permitted the reuse of their voice recordings.
"We had no knowledge these recordings were being redistributed as a podcast until this week," Kristen’s rep told EW. "This was long ago forgotten about."
Rhys-Davies’ rep told Rolling Stone that he found out about he podcast this week, while Cox’s spokesperson told Deadline he wasn’t aware of his voice being used in the podcast.
According to Rolling Stone, a producer for the podcast aent the actors an email asking them to not mention that the audio is years old since "we’d like it to feel like something that was produced more recently."