'Righteous Gemstones' Creator Danny McBride's Love Letter To The South
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Welcome to Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today is Danny McBride. His latest show, The Righteous Gemstones, just finished its fourth and final season. It's a dark comedy about a rich Southern family of televangelists who talk about salvation on TV, but behind the scenes, it is all dysfunction, greed, scandal, and sometimes even crime.

We've watched throughout the show's run the most ridiculous antics. A mass baptism and a wave pool going wrong. A full frontal parking lot scene that's a fight. And the gospel banger misbehaving. At the center of the Gemstone family is Eli Gemstone, played by John Goodman, and his three deeply flawed adult children who are constantly caught up in rivalries and schemes to keep their religious empire intact.

In the scene I'm about to play, the three siblings, played by McBride, Edie Patterson, and Adam Devine, are all trying to convince their dad, Eli, who is retired as the head preacher, to come back to the church for a fundraising event to honor their late mom. Goodman's character, Eli, who speaks first in this clip, has left town on a boat to escape the church and the family. What can I do for you kids? Ain't nobody heard whether you were coming back for Mama's birthday celebration telethon.

Just curious if maybe your RSVP is floating around some bottle out here. Yeah, well, I'm not going to make it. What? Why come? It's for Mama, Daddy. Yeah, that's your dead wife, remember, dude? Of course. I just, I'm out here. I'm trying to wrestle with things. I'm trying to figure out what I need.

This dude's down here wasting away in Margaritaville thinking he's fucking Robinson Caruso. Like you fucking Tom Hanks from that one motion picture. Philadelphia. No, not the AIDS one. The by-hisself one. No, the, uh, dang, I just had it. The by-hisself one. What is the fucking Tom Hanks by-hisself one? Castaway. Castaway. Bingo. That's what you're doing, daddy. You out here acting like you in that goddamn motion picture.

Danny McBride has built a career, really an empire, as a writer, actor, and producer with a sharp sense for the ridiculous side of masculinity and ambition. He creates men who are loud, delusional, and hilarious in part because they are totally unlikable. Think Kenny Powers, the trash-talking, washed-up baseball player in Eastbound and Down, or Neil Gamby, the petty, power-hungry vice principal in Vice Principals.

His films include This Is the End, Tropic Thunder, and Pineapple Express. Most of The Righteous Gemstones was filmed in and around Charleston, South Carolina, where McBride has carved out his own version of Hollywood South with his longtime collaborators, David Gordon Green and Jody Hill, running their production company, Rough House Pictures. And Danny McBride, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you so much. I appreciate being on here.

Remind us of how this idea kind of came about. I read that you initially wanted to write something about the Memphis Mafia right around the time that Elvis died. I did. I had an idea I was working on called The King's Dead that was all about sort of that summer when Elvis died and it was going to be a crime story about the Dixie Mafia and Dixie.

I don't know. I just, I was playing around with it, but I never really found the right angle into it. But there was a lot of details and things I liked about that world and that, I don't know, that attitude for characters. And so I kind of had put a pin in that for a while. I wasn't sure what to do with that story. And after I moved to Charleston, South Carolina, which was in 2017, I just, once I got here, I'd moved from Los Angeles. I just was seeing how many churches were around. And, uh,

It just got me kind of thinking about when I was a kid, I used to go to church a lot. I was raised in a pretty religious family and it just kind of got my brain thinking about what church is like now. And so I started doing some digging around and kind of researching and that's when I kind of came around this idea of these mega churches and kind of like noticing how they were starting to inhabit old box retail stores here in the South. And they were just kind of popping up everywhere. And, uh,

The more I kind of dug around on it, the more it kind of seemed like, well, maybe that Dixie Mafia story could unfold in a televangelist family. Maybe we could mash those two things together. You lived in Los Angeles for like 20 years or something, right? I did. I moved out there in 99. And yeah, I mean, I really had a good time living out there and enjoyed it and

I think once we started working a lot, we were always, the stuff we were making, we were always, you know, coming back to the South to shoot it, whether it was eastbound or vice principals and, you know,

you know as I started to have a family I just started kind of seeing what the writing was on the wall that if I was going to keep doing what I was going to be doing I would be spending you know six months out of the year away from my family so I wanted to try to figure out a way to sort of not do that and so we just had this idea with some of my other collaborators that maybe we would just try you know writing the shows where we end up shooting them and that sort of pushed us all to kind of move down here I

I'm so fascinated by maybe the differences in the way you work in the South versus like shooting something in LA and Hollywood, aside from the food. I'm sure the food is a big part of it, right? Like the craft services. The food is crazy. I had to get a personal trainer when I moved here not to like lose weight, but just to maintain the level of comedy fat that I had so it wouldn't get worse. That was it. Yeah.

Are there parts of the show that maybe might not have existed had you not lived there in South Carolina and shot it there? I think the whole show is so influenced by living here.

I mean, even down to the first season, you know, those blackmailers that sort of get the drop on Jesse Jemstone, my character in that first season, you know, they drive around in this red van. And actually that red van is just, it's a vehicle that I just always saw on the road here when I was like, when I would drive to work. I think me and whoever owned that vehicle, we were always driving to work at the same time. So when I would go into the writer's room, I would always see this red van in my rear view mirror. And so then when it became time to sort of

you know, figure out like what the blackmailers drove. I was like, you know what? This is a really weird request, but there's a red van that I've seen following me all the time. Like when I go to work, it's always there. Like maybe we could try to find who that guy is and get that red van. And then we did it.

And it was kind of funny because then I would be stuck in the scripts and trying to figure out what the resolution would be or where it would go. And there I would be in the car and there's the red van again. So it was sort of like, it was the story was haunting me. You mentioned that your family was religious. What did that look like? You know, when I was a kid, we were Southern Baptists and both my parents were like pretty heavily involved in the church. And

We were one of those families where they were like every Sunday, we'd be there on Wednesdays. My mom was a... She did puppet ministry at the church. So we had like... We would help her take these puppets to church early Sunday morning. And so we were pretty involved. And then when I was in sixth grade, my parents got divorced. And yeah, it was a really interesting thing because we had kind of given this church so much of our time. And then kind of we were there and it was like my mom just sort of raising me and my sister. And...

And then suddenly, like, you know, the church wasn't so much of a welcoming place. You know, there was a lot of judgmental eyes there because my mom had gotten a divorce. And it just, I remember it being a very eye-opening experience for me about some of the people that went to that church and about that level of acceptance and kind of

I don't know, it might have been honestly where the initial spark of just like, wow, everyone's here to learn about one thing, but it's interesting how everyone here doesn't necessarily take that and behave that way. Okay, so I heard that you...

You do deep research. So when you aren't shooting, you're researching for the show. So what's it been like being deep in reading the Bible and watching sermons and things? Has that shaped or changed your thoughts about religion? Yeah. It's been interesting. I mean, I honestly, I liked it. It was kind of, it's kind of coming at a place where it was making me

you know, my wife also grew up, she, my wife is a Catholic and she went to like a Catholic school. And so, you know, for both of us to not like, you know, we both grew up in households where we went to church every Sunday. And so to have young kids and,

you know, that's not what we're doing. You start to kind of realize like, wow, well, going to church, it actually sort of embedded these sort of morals and values. Even if I was just sitting there like drawing mustaches on like the program of the minister, you know, and not paying attention, that it was sort of like laying out a groundwork for just ethics, you know, basic stuff. And so-

It was interesting. As I started kind of reading some of these stories and everything, it was sort of like this stuff made a lasting impression on me. And I just want to kind of find a way to make sure that if my kids aren't getting those stories by going to Sunday school every Sunday, like how can I sort of kind of get some of these ethics and some of these lessons that are important, like make sure that that's a part of their life still.

When you were helping your mom with her puppet shows, were you working on ideas too? I'm thinking about you as a young storyteller. You know, I was just inspired by her. I remember when she first started doing it, she got like a typewriter. And I remember watching her write these sort of two or three page little plays that they would end up doing on Sunday. And I never helped with them or wrote on them, but I remember watching her do it. And then I got to like, I would hear them and then I would see what was performed and

I just always kind of admired it. I thought it was cool that she was doing that. So I just think that from seeing my mom be a storyteller at such a young age, I think it definitely kind of made an impact on me as far as like, you know, that that's something people can do, that you can craft a story and use it to kind of connect with people. You know, one of the things about the series I find remarkable is –

Like it skews this world of big time preachers and televangelists, but it never feels like it's mocking the sincerity of their faith. And I'm just wondering, how did you find the balance like between, I guess I would say like satire and respect? Like, did you ever go too far in your writing and then think, okay, I got to pull this back a little bit?

We're always self-censoring, I guess. We'll always do it first and then we'll decide as it goes on what's too far and what's not enough. But it was interesting when I started this and I met with the other writers, that was something as I was watching other comedies that are set in the world of religion, that was one thing I kind of noticed with all of them is that there was a level of disrespect there towards just people believing in something and

I don't know. That stuff didn't resonate for me, and I felt like I wasn't in on the joke. The joke felt a little bit like, I don't know, biting, pessimistic. It's easy for someone who doesn't believe in something to just be like, ha-ha, look at all these idiots. And that, to me, just didn't seem like what I wanted to spend my time doing. And so from the get-go –

That was sort of what I told the writers. I'm like, listen, I don't ever want any of the jokes to really be about, like, religion. I don't want them to be about someone's faith. You know, like, we're setting these characters in here who are hypocrites, and, like, let's make them the butt of the joke. And from that, we might be able to actually explore something even greater and even open the door to more people coming into the show than maybe would normally. John Goodman, of course, is a legend. And I think I've heard you say that it was a lark that you got him on the show, right?

What's the story? You know, it was just sort of, I think a lack of imagination on my part. I just didn't assume, like I grew up watching him. And so he's just in like this, you know, this Mount Olympus for me that when it was suggested about going for him for Eli, it was just sort of like, yeah, right. Give me a break. Like John Goodman's going to come and work with us. And we sent him the script and the next thing you know, I'm on the phone with him and we're talking about it. And I just, I really couldn't believe it. And, uh,

And like looking back on it, it's like I don't know who would have played that role but him. He grounds the whole world in such an important way that I think it would just turn the entire show into a Looney Tunes episode if you didn't have someone that has his gravity and

His abilities. Yeah, it's true. He makes the Enterprise feel like it's real, like you can see that someone like him could build this empire. And I think if you didn't feel that, I think there's something that would feel a lot less about the show. Where did you get the name from? I understand Righteous, but Gemstones. You know, it's funny. It just kind of came to me one day that I would, it just was like with all things, it starts with an image or an idea or something and then

It just kind of sticks. And so Jesse Gemstone was the first name I came up with. I was just, I don't know. It was just a word that came into my brain and I just started tossing it around. And then it just stuck. It just became what it was. I mean, the same thing for baby Billy. I mean, all of the...

The names, they have to go through some little bit of a testing process with me. I have to be able to like say the name like excited, fearful, and angry. And if it sounds funny said all three ways, then it sticks. It's in. You say it out loud to yourself? I say it out loud, yeah. I'll like walk around like, baby Billy, you know, and my kids are like, what's going on? I'm like, I'm testing out to make sure this name has what it takes. Yeah.

I got to play a clip to give people kind of a grounding of this. The thing about the Gemstone kids is that

I don't think anybody ever really talks the way they do, and yet they kind of feel really believable. So this clip I'm about to play is from season two, and it's the three siblings, you, your sister, played by Edie Patterson, and your brother, played by Adam Devine. And you all are standing by this statue of your late mother, and you've got this announcement to make that soon you will be the head of the church. And of course, the three of you start fighting. Your character speaks first. Let's listen.

Except my dominance or don't. Doesn't matter to me. The damn tides of time and the winds of dust are upon us. My reign is nigh. What the f*** did you even just say, man? That made no sense to me. That sounded foreign. That's not a phrase, dummy. Oh, Mike. You're just both a bunch of two-bit half-rate siblings. Damn Frank Stallone and f***ing Stephen Baldwin over here.

I'm Stephen Baldwin? Yes, you are. Oh. No, you did not. I ain't got no time for this. Bye, Felicia. Okay, no. What did he just say? No. Did he just say bye, Felicia to me? Yeah, what does that mean? Bye, Felicia. Jesse, you will never run this family. So bye, Felicia to you, Jesse. Who's Felicia? You are. No, you're Felicia. Let's just all act like adults. You're Felicia. We can act like adults if he's Felicia because I'm not Felicia.

That was the scene from season two of The Righteous Gemstones. And my guest today is creator and star of the show, Danny McBride. Okay, first off, Danny, take me inside your brain. What do you know about Bye, Felicia? Are you ready for this now? Yeah.

Oh, God. I mean, you know, I have, like I said, I have young kids. They are constantly on YouTube. They're constantly showing me just silly stuff. And so all of it ends up just bleeding into my head somewhere or another. And the Gemstone siblings are just like so stunted that it just seems like they just communicate in broken English mixed in with tons of pop culture. Yeah. I

I was wondering because, you know, this show came out around the same time as HBO's Succession. And it's like they're two sides of the same coin in a way in the fact that there are these dysfunctional siblings who are fighting over who will inherit the empire. And they're like really, really stunted. None of them are equipped to do that. Do you see the similarities there? You know what's funny is like I've never seen Succession and I know I need to read.

Really? I have. Like the moment that I kind of like heard like, oh, it's a similar theme. I was like, you know what? I'm going to wait to watch it till we're done so that I don't, it doesn't spook me out or anything. But, you know, I've heard the similarities. And I mean, it definitely seems like they're, you know, exploring very similar themes. And I think it's like fun, interesting that there was also Yellowstone at the same time. And so to me, it kind of feels like, I don't know if there was some kind of cultural thing going on of like,

people inheriting the crown and not deserving it. And we're all like dealing with that guilt or something. I don't know where it came from, but it was out in the world. One of the through lines, in addition to like trying to inherit an empire, the thing that you do in The Righteous Gemstones is all of the children are

absolutely adore and worship the memory of their mama. And that love feels so authentic. The mother wound they obviously have by her loss, it almost feels like it's what makes them good and redeemable. It feels like they also really do love the Lord, despite the fact that they're obviously messed up. Yeah. I mean, I think that with that, I mean, as we started, you know, it's interesting. Like when I first started writing the show, um,

The very first attempt I had on the pilot was it was – I was a minister in Edie actually. I had written her to be my wife, and we were in a small church, and I was being blackmailed by a bigger church that wanted to move in on us. It was going to kind of be about us going up against that bigger church.

And I just was real, I was struggling. I wrote that script and there was something about him. Like, it just doesn't, I don't know where this goes. And I don't, I'm not really identifying with who this minister is. And there just wasn't enough there for me to kind of put my hooks into. And then as I started like really looking at the story, I was kind of like, you know, who's interesting are the people that would blackmail a small time minister to take his church. And so then it was sort of like a light went off and it was like, that's who this is about, you know? And

you know, a lot of people don't have experience with running a megachurch or can identify with that. So for me, it suddenly became like, it's about a family and it's a family who's suffered loss because I think that's something that people can identify with. And I think when you find those things that are relatable, then you, if you can hit those things earnestly, I think you can then put those characters in any world and people will take the ride.

Have any church families or people just in general reached out to you and said, this is us? Nobody has been that specific, but I did talk to different pastors when I was doing the show, before I did the show. I don't know if they would have talked to me after I was doing the show, but there were people who definitely opened their doors to me and let me just pick their brains and ask questions about how a church is run and about the minutia of it. And

There was one minister that I talked to, and he was very open about just how it was run and how things worked. And I saw him actually just a few months ago out in town, and he kind of came up and then whispered into my ear. He's like, nobody knows I've seen it, but you nailed it. That's what he said. Oh, my gosh. And when I saw him, my heart dropped. So I'm like, oh, God, what's he going to say? Right, you're trying to avoid him. I was thrilled.

Our guest today is Danny McBride, creator and star of The Righteous Gemstones. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

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Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nusberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read. It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week.

What percentage of the show is kind of ad-libbed? You know, out of all the shows we've done, we definitely did a lot of improv at Eastbound and a lot in VPs. This show actually has the least amount of improv we probably have done of all of our shows just because there's so many...

spinning plates with all the different characters and everything that we always kind of just end up being up against the clock to pull it all off. So most of it is probably scripted more than anything we've done before. But we kind of also allow ourselves that if somebody has an idea on the day, we're not precious about anything. And so scenes like at church lunch, when you have all those characters sitting around there, we would rip on those.

days for sure. Like everybody would just kind of riff. And those are the scenes where you have the entire cast there. So it'd be kind of foolish to film and not let someone say something if they want to. Can you recall a scene?

Oh, let's see. The church lunches, they happen a lot in a lot of the seasons. And so the schedule on Gemstones is very aggressive. You know, a lot of times we have like two and three location moves during the course of the day. But church lunch, because there's so many characters and it's on a set, it's like those were the days we have with the most control. So you would usually have a full day to shoot those scenes. And yeah,

That just allowed for everybody, I think, A, to kind of take a breath and just like, hey, we're all here just to have fun and there's not some ticking clock to be worked against. And you would just go around the table and Edie throws in something and then on the next take, Adam throws in something and it just turns into all this chaos. I mean, I think in the second season,

I think it's like in the first episode maybe, we're sitting around that church lunch and we're talking about how Judy and BJ got married at Disney World. And then we start like railing on her about like were any of the legacy characters present and like all of that stuff was all just improv. It just –

And it was so fun just to kind of sit there and, you know, Edie's got to be she's got to be disgusted by us. And we're poking holes in her wedding. And so everyone's just throwing in all of their Disney knowledge and acting like they're Disney pros. But that was just how every day with all those characters were. We would just have fun and try to ultimately make each other laugh. Let's listen to that that scene, which was in the second season.

Disney World was a thing. It was BJ's dream wedding destination. So we did it Nike style, dog. We just did it, okay? That's how we roll. We're seat of our pants. We're fun kids. We're whim babies. So...

We meant no disrespect, Daddy. Oh, Daddy. I just want to know who officiated the wedding. Was it Donald or was it Goofy? Oh, slice. That was a good one. It was Prince Eric, for your information. Thank you. Prince Eric? Who the f*** is that? The boy from Little Mermaid. The hottest guy in the entire Disney catalog? It's Ariel's boyfriend, you f***ing b***h.

Oh, Lord. Y'all went down to Disney World, didn't invite any family to come to your wedding, and you didn't even get a legacy character to marry. What legacy character are we supposed to go for that's better than Prince Eric? Oh, I don't know. How about Mickey Mouse? Mickey. Enough! Judy, I don't want to discuss the mermaid wedding. That was the scene from season two of The Righteous Gemstones. And my guest today is creator and star of the show, Danny McBride. Did you grow up with a lot of cursing around you?

You know, I didn't, but I was, I loved cursing. I mean, when I was a kid, it's like I, like Two Live Crew and Eddie Murphy. And like, I mean, I just had all this stuff. I would record this stuff like from friends on cassette tapes. I remember like Eddie Murphy's Delirious. I had like an audio tape of it that I had recorded off of like a friend's like VHS or something. And

I would just put it in my Walkman and I can remember like driving to church with my parents in the back seat and they're like, what are you listening to? I'm like, nothing, nothing. You know, I would just be like, I'm just listening to Eddie Murphy or listening to Live Crew. I mean, it just always tickled me. I just always thought it was so funny just someone speaking with such vulgar. It just, I don't know. I think it ruined me. It tainted me. Well, it definitely is infused in your shows. Yeah.

How do you navigate like the children on set and stuff when there's all that cursing? Which I should say it's gratuitous, but it also like really works. I just always have to watch your shows when my kids are out of the room, you know? Yes, 100%. Well, you know, what we try to do with it is that like,

Even that language, part of it is like it's an extension of these – of like the character development in a strange way. It's like that sometimes that language is used because they don't have the facilities to sort of express what they want to say. And so relying on just like some bombastic way of communicating ends up being part of the fabric of who they are, that it kind of represents some sort of like –

stunted ability to communicate. And so when we start looking at some of the cursing that way, I don't know, then it becomes like a weird sort of game of character development where it might on this surface just appear like they're dropping F-bombs, but then there's actually thought behind why they're dropping the F-bomb there. Right, right, right. Have your kids seen any of your work yet?

You know, sadly, they've seen all of Gemstones. Wait, how old are they? I've tried to keep it from them, but they'll come by the set, they'll see stuff, and then I'll be showing my wife a cut of something, and next thing you know, it's like the two kids are upstairs looking down the steps, watching it, and you know...

So we've tried to keep it from them, but they've seen it all. But, you know, it provided some life lessons about what kind of behavior to not emulate in the world. Okay, something I really wanted to know. Your character, Jesse, in the Gemstones, and...

If we go way back to Kenny and Eastbound and Down, they both have like swagger, you know, like the way that you walk, you kind of have this like gangster lean. And since you like brought up two live crew, I'm bringing this up.

Is that how you move or is that part of the characters you play? I think it's a little bit part of the characters. I mean, I might have a little swagger in my life. I won't totally diminish my swagger. But, you know, it's also just like I, you know, growing up, George Jefferson, he honestly is like one of my favorite characters when I was a kid. Like, I just thought he was so funny and how mean he was and funny he was. And that little bit of a swagger he had that, I don't know, it's just always something that sort of tickled me. And so, yeah.

Jesse, I definitely infuse that with. Jesse, for whatever reason, is always standing like he's about to bow up and fight someone. His fists are clenched and he's squeezing his cheeks together and just walking with a strut. But that's how I would just get into character. That was it. Now that I'm thinking about it, even that clip I play where you're like, bye, Felicia, as you're walking away, that is the George Jefferson walk, 100%. It totally is. Yeah.

There's something in all of your characters. You know, you present as a really nice guy, but there's something in all of your characters. They're all kind of terrible. And I'm just wondering what interests you about these types of people, the Kenny's of the world, the, you know, Jesse's of the world, you know? You know what I think it is? I think it's trying to find the perfect clown for some of this comedy. You know, I think if a character is too goofy, you

I don't identify with them as much or like that comedy doesn't like speak to me as much, you know? And so then it's sort of like finding like, how do you center a comedy around a clown, but it's not just pratfalls or just like goofy behavior. And so to me, character deficiency starts to be what seems like something fun to play around with. These are such exaggerated, enlarged like versions of people around us, you know, that I don't know. There's something about it that it's like by definition,

making fun of somebody who doesn't know how to express themselves or just wears their emotions on their sleeve to such an obnoxious level. There's something there that as you make fun of them, you can also kind of like poke at the truths of that, of like why somebody would behave that way and what that ultimately probably means. And so I don't think it's like trying to create a defense for jerks, but it is just a way of, I guess, exploring jerks in a way that is comical and maybe a little enlightening.

Our guest today is Danny McBride, creator and star of The Righteous Gemstones. We'll be right back after a short break. This is Fresh Air. This message comes from Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank for details. Capital One N.A., member FDIC.

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David Green and Jody Hill, you guys have been longtime partners for a really long time. When did you guys know that you all had something special? Oh, I can't, you know, I don't really know. I mean, it's like, you know, we all met at the North Carolina School of the Arts and we're, it was in Winston-Salem and it's just this kind of tiny film school at the time. And

It was not in the cards for me to go somewhere like NYU or USC. And this was like in 1995 is when I was a freshman at school there. And so I was really just trying to like calling around, trying to find a film school that I could A, afford and I could hopefully get into. And, you know, film schools at that point – Is that what you mean when you say it was not in the cards for you? Do you mean because of the cost or – Yeah, there was just no way that – yeah.

There wasn't a world where I would have been able to have afforded those loans or been able to get them out. And I actually had a friend who had gone to NYU that lived in my neighborhood, and he kind of graduated right as I was applying for schools. And I remember that he had asked a lot of people for money, and then he was sort of disgruntled when he graduated from school and now had like a ton of debt and wasn't sure what he was going to do next. And so –

The whole thing seemed daunting and kind of scary to me. So I needed to find something that I could afford. And so School of the Arts was a state school in North Carolina, and their film program was brand new. I think we were the third class that graduated from there. And what I really liked about that school was that

When you made a movie there, you weren't allowed to spend your own money. You weren't allowed to go raise money outside of what the budget was. Like they gave you what the budget was and that was part of the education was like, how do you make it work with what you're given? And I felt like what was nice about that is it seemed like it put

all the filmmakers on the same playing field. It wasn't like the rich kids were going to have the best movies. Like everyone was, was given like a number and this is what everyone needed to kind of like create their vision with. And it was awesome. And I think to pull that off, you really had to rely on the other people that were at school with you and your friends and your collaborators and,

I think that's what sort of started Jodi and, you know, David and John Caccuri and Jeff Bradley, these other guys I work with that are still involved with the show. I don't know. It just made us always want to kind of rely on each other more than rely on like on the system. Did the system get it? Like get that Southern thing that you have that threads throughout these characters. Did you ever find where you were up against a wall?

You know, we've been very, very lucky about what we've done. You know, we found – Casey Bloys was –

Who runs all of HBO and everything over there now. And he was one of the executives that was on Eastbound and Down. And so he always got what we were trying to do. And I think because of that, that's why I've always been excited about creating more of theirs. I feel like he's always understood us. He's always got what we're trying to do. And I think it's tough. I think there's definitely people who in the early days especially would see what we were doing.

And based on the kind of material they would send my way, it was sort of like they don't get it. Like they're sending us like – What kind of stuff? Yeah. Just like I mean for a while there was like no roles I would ever get submitted that were any of the characters had sleeves. There was like every role I was getting was just somebody named like painter or dip and he never had sleeves. You know what I'm saying?

Like, this isn't me. I can't do this. But everything was sort of about – I don't know. Everything was sort of like the South was the punchline in everything it seemed. And so for us as being – we're all guys who went to art school, and yes, we grew up in the South. But we didn't really – like our version of the South wasn't what we were seeing sort of being mocked kind of constantly –

in media. It was sort of like, we grew up in the South and I felt like there was lots of different types of people and it wasn't just one type of person. And there's, you know, there are artists here and there are, you know, entrepreneurs and it isn't just some sort of backwoods place. And so I think that became important to us to kind of set these stories that take place in the South that kind of is a, you know, a love letter to where we grew up. And sometimes we might, you

you know, make fun of those stereotypes or embrace them where it makes sense, you know, but I think ultimately we were trying to kind of like, you know, I don't know, not that we were trying to hold, you know, our hometowns up in some high esteem, but we were like, if you're going to make fun of the South, there's more clever ways to do it than how it's being done.

I want to play a clip from Eastbound and Down. This is from the pilot episode. To remind people, the show is about this once-famous Major League Baseball pitcher named Kenny Powers, who basically falls from grace because of his arrogance and bad behavior. And after flaming out of the MLB, he returns in disgrace to North Carolina, to his hometown, where he...

takes on a job as a substitute PE teacher at his old middle school. And in the scene I'm about to play, Kenny is eating a meal with his brother, Dustin Powers, played by John Hawks, and his wife, Casey Powers, played by Jennifer Irwin, and their children. Let's listen. Did you get the Christmas cards we got you this year? Yeah.

Uh, yeah, I think so, yeah. I mean, I get a s*** ton of fan mail, so that's a lot of mail to go through, but yeah, I mean, yeah, I think I did. Y'all get that, uh, the tanning bed I sent y'all last year? Yeah, the one you sent three years ago. Three years, wow. Well, it is a tanning bed, you know, so...

You boys ever tag team anybody? Beat up any kids in your neighborhood? When we were kids, me and your dad used to beat the s*** out of these s*** brothers that used to live down the street from us. Hilarious. I mean, this guy was the most ruthless one. Now, I'm sitting here, he's got a family, he's got a nice shirt on. I think we're gonna tone down the language, right? I mean, my mind's still blown you got three kids. I mean, I remember you having this one. Old blondie over here. We got three.

Three handsome young men. The power's away. That littlest one's a girl. You certainly are. Her name is Rose, named after Miss Kate Winslet in the movie Titanic. Y'all named your daughter after f***ing Titanic? It's Cassie's favorite movie. Oh, wow. You gotta be f***ing me. What's his name? Shrek? That was my guest Danny McBride in his 2009 show Eastbound and Down.

The laughs come, Dani, from being inappropriate. I mean, your character just continually says politically incorrect stuff. You also like thread this very fine needle of like race and racism in a way that like we can laugh at it, you know. There's something there that also, though, can withstand the test of time. You know how some humor just doesn't hold up because it's now considered offensive. Like, is that something you think about when you're writing?

You know, I think with all of it, even with being offensive, you know, for us, it's like, it's never really about just trying to be offensive or trying to touch a third rail. It all comes from character. And so for us, it's like, if the character is the one that's behaving that way or saying that way, it feels different than if it's us saying that, you know, and I feel like, uh,

I feel like that's why sometimes stand-up can be, I think, dated or whatever, as if it's like, if that feels like that's coming from the individual. And with this, it's like, you know, Kenny's beliefs and what Kenny holds on to and how Kenny sees the world, like, that's all part of what the joke is, you know? And it's all him just casually dropping sort of

his world views in like you know an unfiltered unhinged way like if you're paying attention it's sort of like well this is why his life's not working out for him you know he's like looking at the world in such a backwards way that this is like why things aren't adding up for him so i think maybe that's why it is uh able to withstand a little bit more is because ultimately it's rooted in character as opposed to just trying to sort of get a reaction

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Danny McBride, the creator and co-star of the HBO comedy The Righteous Gemstones. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

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I'm Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. At a time of sound bites and short attention spans, our show is all about the deep dive. We do long-form interviews with people behind the best in film, books, TV, music, and journalism. Here our guests open up about their process and their lives in ways you've never heard before. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY. You know, I read that...

Is it true that Kanye West approached you and asked you to play him in a biopic? He did. It took me a while to believe that that was Kanye West when he called me. My phone rang and he said, this is Kanye West. It was just like, get out of town. No, it's not. Who is this? Yeah, it was a few years ago. He reached out and I guess he was a fan of some of the work I had done and

He said he wanted to come to meet me in Charleston, South Carolina to talk about a project. And he came down here and we hung out for this awesome day and went out in a boat and talked about life. And he was telling me he was interested in doing a story about his life and wanted me to play him. And it was just sort of like shocking and kind of like – it's like I'm flattered, but I don't understand how it would 100% work. But it's like let's talk. Yeah.

Did he talk about what he sees in the characters you play and how you like really draw out these themes that really spoke to him? He just said that there was, I remember when we were on the phone call, he said there was like a fearlessness to it all that like we were just kind of willing to kind of go there with things. And he felt like that's what would have been needed.

That had to be flattering, though, even if it was kind of crazy, I guess. It was very flattering. And it was a very, like, it was a day that I will definitely not forget. You know, we hung out and just talked about life and, you know, out in the boat for a while. Then we came back here and

My son was pretty young at the time, and we came into the house. My son's like, do you think Kanye wants to watch me play Fortnite? And I was like, I don't know. Maybe ask him. And then it just like for 10 minutes, Kanye and I just stood there watching my son play Fortnite. Yeah.

That's love there, right? When the kids are like, watch me. You know, that means that you're cool, you know. I read that your daughter actually took her very first steps on the Gemstones church set a few years ago. What was the last day of shooting like? The last day of shooting was nuts. I mean, it really was. Everything this last season was so crazy.

difficult to shoot just, you know, the, the state of the industry and the belt is being tightened kind of across the board. And so we were definitely up against like budgetary limitations we hadn't experienced before. And we were really just pushing our all into getting this show made and into, uh, into landing it. And, uh,

we were sort of just navigating one crazy event after the next, I mean, even just down to the very, like last week of shooting, we're up at that lake house and we're shooting like, you know, the whole climax of the whole series. And the last day we're supposed to be there, that hurricane Elaine came through while we were up there shooting. And, uh, the, what we were supposed to shoot that day was the last scene with, uh,

with Edie and Adam, myself and Sean William Scott, like sort of having that final prayer. And it was a scene that we knew was important. And we had had like a whole day that we were scheduled to shoot it. But then with this storm coming in, we all arrived at work and it's like, the winds are blowing a hundred miles per hour. There's no power. There's trees everywhere down. And it was like, what do we do? How do we get this scene? And finally, I guess about six hours later, the winds had died down where it was like safe for people to come out and we still didn't have power. And

But everybody just cared so much, the crew and everyone, about getting this. They knew that it was important, and everybody showed up, and we kind of got onto the set, and we plugged into generators, and a scene that we wanted to have 10 hours to shoot, we suddenly had about three or four hours to shoot, and everyone just had to kind of bring their game. And that's kind of what the whole show felt like. It was always just people pushing themselves beyond what...

was expected because I feel like we all just genuinely cared about what we were doing and really wanted it to be good and

I think I was so concerned with just finishing the show that I hadn't taken much time just to stop and think about it being over. And you start realizing, oh, God, that might be the last time that character's on camera ever. And it all just started to hit everyone. And we wrapped, I think, around 3 in the morning. And there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Everybody was bawling. And it was wild. It was a roller coaster of emotions. Did you have a moment alone where you're like, wow, I just built this thing, and now it's done?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I drove home that night around three in the morning and, you know, everyone's partying at the base camp because it's done. And I feel like as soon as it's finished, like something happens with me. Like I, you know, Cinderella, like everything turns back into a pumpkin and I'm just like, the ball's done. I got to get home. And I remember just like driving home and it just feeling so surreal, like so strange that we had just done it all and that it was finished. And

The next day, I went back to the stages. We were shooting since the first season. Our sets were in an old shopping mall. We overtook an old Sears, which maybe Billy preaches in in the first season. But that's where all of our sets were built. Eli's house was built there, the church lunch scenes. Everything was in that Sears. So there was years and years worth of props and costumes and just stacked everything.

And I went back there the next morning to kind of wander around. And yeah, it was emotional. It was almost like someone had died. When you're looking around at all these old things that there's so much thought put into designing things. And now it's all just being packaged up to be liquidated. I was like, I don't need to come back here anymore. I've seen it. I've done it. I'm good. Wow. Also that visual because...

The Sears before you was kind of like that. You inhabited a space that was kind of destitute and brought it to life, you know? Yeah. So we're just like Sears, you know, here one day, gone the next. Oh, no. Well, Danny McBride, I just want to thank you for all the joy that you brought me and so many others with The Righteous Gemstones. And thank you for this conversation. I really appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time. It means a lot.

Danny McBride is the creator and co-star of The Righteous Gemstones.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, comedian and actor Rami Youssef on writing comedy about being the son of Egyptian immigrants and trying to figure out what it means for him to be Muslim, living in contemporary America and working in show business. His new animated comedy series is set just before and after 9-11. He won a Golden Globe for his role in his earlier series, Rami. I hope you can join us. ♪

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Teresa Madden is our senior producer today. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nakundi, and Anna Bauman.

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