When Jay Bakker heard that Hollywood wanted to make another movie about his parents, Tammy Faye Messner and Jim Bakker—the former first couple of televangelism, who built a commercial empire around their ministry only for it to crash and burn in sex and money scandals—he called a therapist.
“I’ve always been in therapy, but I said, ‘I think it’s time to go over this stuff again and prepare myself for this coming out,’” says Jay—“this” being The Eyes of Tammy Faye, the biopic opening Friday that stars Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield as his parents. “Because a lot of trauma happened.”
Jay, who is a pastor and cofounder of the inclusive Revolution Church, says he has also changed his social media settings ahead of Friday’s premiere, making some accounts private and disabling comments on others. If there was a silver lining to his family’s scandals in the ’80s—which were covered so rabidly at the time that Jay recalls tabloid reporters offering him money for gossip as a kid—it was that there was no social media then.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye is well-acted and well-intentioned. Chastain was inspired to produce the film after seeing the 2000 documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye and realizing how unfairly Messner was treated by the media. But to make that point, the film, written by Abe Sylvia and directed by Michael Showalter, would also have to revisit the family’s humiliations, which began when Jay was 11.
That year it was revealed that Jim had had an affair with a former church secretary and paid her $265,000 to keep her quiet. Jim was stripped of his ministerial credentials. Then, in the following years, as Tammy Faye battled an addiction to Ativan, Jim was convicted of federal charges that he had bilked his followers out of $158 million, and was sent to prison. (Originally sentenced to 45 years, Jim’s sentence was reduced and he ultimately served almost five years in prison.)
So while Jay believed in Chastain, he says, “At the same time, I was like, Here we go again. This thing never ends. My parents lost everything. My dad went to prison. My parents got divorced. I dealt with that in high school.” After a sigh, he adds, “Nothing surprises me. I’ve had a really strange life.”
In 1990, Kevin Spacey and Bernadette Peters played Jay’s parents in a TV movie called Fall From Grace, which was “awful…really, really bad,” says Jay. He recalls Peters having to essentially defend Tammy Faye to television interviewers who were still intent on characterizing his mother as “a clown” and his father as “a criminal.”
Chastain had years to prepare to play Tammy Faye—doing extensive research and having conversations with Jay and his sister Tammy Sue about their late mother, who died in 2007. When it came time for Jay to see the final film, Chastain was in such a Tammy Faye headspace that she gave Jay a motherly warning about several sex scenes. In one sequence, Chastain’s Tammy Faye—while pregnant with Jay—consummates an affair with Grammy-winning gospel singer and eccentric Gary Paxton.
“I think she was worried about me seeing that,” says Jay, pointing out that the movie had to conflate the actual timeline. (In reality, Jay was born in 1975, a few years before Tammy Faye grew closer to Paxton, according to Jay.) But Jay, who preaches the same forgiveness and acceptance that his mother did, was not concerned. His parents have been rendered such laughing stocks and/or criminals by the media for decades that to him, depictions of his mother and father as sexual philanderers are an improvement. “Actually, my parents being shown as human beings and sexual beings, I thought, Well, that’s great. People are sexual,” says Jay. “I thought it was very humanizing in a way.”
Jay has his factual nit picks about the film—one being that his parents didn’t speak as religiously in regular life as Chastain and Garfield’s characters do—but only admiration for Chastain and her performance. “She really grasped my mom’s personality, my mom’s love. But what got me the most was the mannerisms and small movements,” says Jay, explaining that the actor even marked up her script to choreograph where her hands would be when speaking her lines.
Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1987.
From AP/Shutterstock.Jay had a similarly positive experience speaking with Garfield. “He was really empathetic and saw the good in my dad that most people didn’t,” says Jay. “He felt like he was taking on a crazy role… he was like, ‘Your father is so complex, so full of contradictions.’ I think he wanted to take the role even deeper than he was able to.” Jay called Garfield after seeing the film to thank him. “I said, ‘You did a good job. You humanized him, and that’s something most people don’t want to do. Most people want to make him the villain.”
Tammy Faye didn’t live to see the film, and Jay thinks his father, Jim, will probably decline to watch it. “For my dad, it was too traumatizing,” he says. “I think he was one of only three people who had a satellite network, and he was building this huge retreat center that had a water park, but also had hotels and centers for unwed mothers and food pantries. No one really remembers the good stuff. No one remembers my mom’s prison ministry; no one remembers how much they did for people in need. So for him, I think it’s a hurtful place. Going through prison for almost five years? That’s tough. He doesn’t trust the media. He doesn’t trust people. And I guess I can’t blame him for that.… Who my dad was in the ’80s and who my dad is now are very different people.”
Revisiting this traumatic chapter of his family history through the prism of The Eyes of Tammy Faye has turned up old feelings for Jay. The Revolution Church pastor says he was asked to do press for the film—a request that pinpricked at the resentment he had as a child, when his parents insisted he regularly appear on their Jim and Tammy Show.
“When I was a kid, I didn’t really have a choice to be on TV or not. I felt like a prop as a kid,” says Bakker. “Now, I’m a 45-year-old adult with children, realizing, I’ve got to make sure that I’m not a prop for people making a film about my parents. You know what I mean? I don’t want to put myself back into that role again.” He clarifies, “Jessica’s heart is in the right place and the film is humanizing. I don’t feel like it’s perfect, but it’s definitely one of those things where I have to have my own boundaries and maintain those boundaries with the film. I’m not going to come out and say, ‘It’s perfect.’”
Jay is grateful that The Eyes of Tammy Faye will give audiences the chance to see his mother, in Chastain’s hands, as the empathetic trailblazer she was. The film recreates her 1985 interview with Steve Pieters, a gay man living with HIV. During the interview—which took place just two months after President Ronald Reagan first publicly acknowledged the AIDS crisis—Tammy Faye treated Steve with compassion and gently chastised her evangelical audience.
“How sad that we as Christians—who are to be the salt of the earth, we who are supposed to be able to love everyone—are afraid so badly of an AIDS patient that we will not go up and put our arm around them and tell them that we care,” Bakker said during the tear-filled 24-minute interview.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye gives its title character sole credit for booking and making this milestone interview happen—but Jay says his dad was also responsible. “They realized that this needed to be talked about,” says Jay. “That moment set a trajectory in my own life to be willing to say things and take stands that aren’t always popular at the church or even outside the church. I’m proud she’s being remembered for something that was that amazing.”
After the scandal, Jay says his mother was acutely aware of how the world saw her—the ugly-crying cartoons and sketch-show caricatures—but unable to let the criticism crack her optimism.
The film ends with a gaggle of teenagers laughing at Chastain’s Tammy Faye and pointing. Rather than skulk away, Chastain’s Tammy Faye approaches the kids, sticks out her hand, and introduces herself. This plot point was inspired by real-life encounters Tammy Faye had with her critics. Jay remembers going to a Palm Desert mall with his mother and inevitably seeing kids wearing “I Ran Into Tammy” shirts, novelty tees where the text is accompanied by a splatter of makeup.
“What she would actually do is go up and ask if they were hungry,” says Jay. His mother would then march the kids over to the Marie Callender’s and pay for whatever they wanted to order. “She’d say, ‘You can get whatever you want and then we’ll just sit and talk.’”
“She was very aware [of their criticism], but she always loved people,” says Jay. “Even when they were mean, she loved them. And my dad was the same way too. They were both very forgiving human beings. And I have to say that that’s probably built a very strong foundation in my life—for why I don’t like cancel culture and things like that. I believe in redemption, and I don’t believe anybody’s beyond redemption. It was pretty powerful growing up that way. I can remember my parents having people over who had hurt them and said horrible things. And being like, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this?’ And them talking about the importance of forgiveness with me.”
Jay misses his deep conversations with his mother. “She felt very deeply; her tears were genuine. I think you get that [in the movie]. But I don’t think she or my family are anything you’re going to fully understand after a two-hour movie,” says Jay. That being said, he also thinks his mother would be thrilled by Chastain’s portrayal. “I think she would be very excited about it and honored by the film. She’d probably point out the things that were misdone and say, ‘Oh, that never happened.’ But I think she would be mostly proud of it, and proud of Jessica, and want to hug her neck and thank her.”
Jay hopes that the people who see The Eyes of Tammy Faye are able to extend the title character’s brand of forgiveness and understanding toward both of his parents.
“I hope people can empathize in a way of, ‘What would I have done had I been put into this type of situation?’” says Jay. “We see rock stars go through this all the time—when people are suddenly put in the spotlight and given so much responsibility at once. It gets overwhelming. I hope people realize that life is more complicated…and that we’re all just human beings trying to make it.”
“I think with my parents, you had two people trying to cope with their own childhood traumas and make sense out of life, trying to help others make sense out of life,” says Jay. “In essence they were wounded healers. Unfortunately that always gets a bit messy.”
But if people are able to take one powerful message from his mother’s story, let it be this: “It’s funny what a lot of makeup and some unconditional love can do.”
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