Gina Rodriguez, Patricia Heaton and Zachary Levi on ‘The Star’

Announcer: This holiday season, witness the story of the first Christmas through a whole new set of eyes.

Gina Rodriguez: I think it’s going to be like, if you grew up with the Nativity story, oh, it’s just such a beautiful new telling of it. So I think you’re going to find an excitement of being able to hear it from a different perspective. I know, for me, that was definitely a pull.

Mary: Bo?
Bo the Donkey: Mary! You’re in danger! You need to listen to what I’m about to say extremely carefully. Ee-yaw! Ee-yaw!
Mary: You ever feel like he’s trying to talk to us?

Gina Rodriguez: Oddly enough, I just played Mary the way I see my sisters and my mother and the strength that they give off every single day, and I think Mary is that: She is every woman that is capable of caring for others outside of herself.

Joseph: There’s something seriously wrong with those animals.

Zachary Levi: It’s a really cool honor to get to bring Joseph to life and to be mixed up in this really cool assortment of awesome other actors and people that are bringing all the animals to life, which is the really cool new way of being able to tell the Nativity story.

Nobody’s done it to this point, I don’t think, and we’ve done it and I think that’s going to allow for younger audiences, newer audiences, to see and hear and metabolize the Nativity story in a fresh new way.

White Camel: It’s the Wise Men!
Brown Camel: Hide! Quickly!
Third Camel: The other way! The other left!
Brown Camel: Deborah! Are you ok?

Patricia Heaton: In The Star, I play Edith the Cow, naturally. And she’s so funny. She’s tired, she’s a little too old for all this activity — she doesn’t buy any of this. So she gets this wonderful surprise of The Star.

So to have that kind of movie that the whole family can go to is what we’re really hoping that people find, and that it becomes a tradition in people’s families to watch this movie together.

Zachary Levi: These talking animals definitely bring an entry point for children that I don’t think children have with the Nativity story up to this point. Whether you subscribe to Christianity or some other faith or are of no faith, I think it’s an empowering story nonetheless.