With one of modern comedy’s jewels back on screen for one last season, Danny McBride and Cassidy Freeman join Steve Newall to chat The Righteous Gemstones.
The Righteous Gemstones: Season 4
Danny McBride’s phenomenally funny comedy The Righteous Gemstones returns for its fourth and final season, charting the fortunes of a multi-generational family of megachurch preachers. It’s a show that offers a lot more than that description suggests, never treating religion itself as the punching bag, but as with previous McBride outings like Eastbound and Down, making its main characters the butt of its jokes—even if their lives are as opulent and bejeweled as their surname might suggest.
“I don’t have any intentions of making this some sort of like statement about what people should believe about their existence,” McBride says. “So I never wanted the jokes to come at the expense of what somebody believes in.”
By not making the Gemstone family too goofy or complete buffoons, as he puts it, McBride is proud of the flaws he’s written into his characters: “By making them have the wrong mindset, by making them egotistical, by making them misinformed, it allows everyone to laugh at them and I think at the end of the day, it gives you an opportunity to explore something that’s a little bit more interesting. I’m not saying that we’re like the Gemstones, but there’s probably elements of the Gemstones exaggerated that people can identify with, here and there.”
That’s echoed by Cassidy Freeman, who plays McBride’s onscreen wife Amber. “I think what Danny said about like, being able to relate to these inflamed, but very like true, shitty parts of people, I think it allows us to reflect and also feel like maybe a little more okay with who we are or the thoughts we have, even if we don’t act on them like the Gemstones might act on them.”
Speaking of the shitty parts of people, megachurch culture has been very much in the spotlight in this part of the world in recent years. For McBride, it’s their excess that appeals as a storyteller, as opposed to their other much-documented ills. “With some of these mega churches, it’s like you can’t go far enough,” he says. “We’ll write stuff, and then we’ll see things in the news that are even bigger than what we wrote, that we felt was already too big.”
According to McBride, the size and nature of their spectacle helps make megachurches such a pure product of American culture: “It sums up America perfectly that something that’s meant to be so spiritual and kind of personal can be, you know, exploited into something that involves monster trucks and wire work and all of this crazy stuff that has nothing to do with what the ultimate message is.”
“I mean, the Gemstones, ultimately, they probably have more to do with the showbiz industry than they really do with the religious industry, you know. So the musical numbers, the lavish costumes, it’s all sort of like just tapping into this idea of entertainers.”
McBride’s seen an interesting change in his own attitude towards religion while making the show. “I grew up going to church, and I hated it,” he says. “I would sit in church and just like, draw pictures on the pastor’s face and the programs and just wait to be done with it, you know.” As he’s gotten older, McBride confesses that while he doesn’t take his kids to church, he’s started to see what he took from his own experience: “If there were certain morals and ethics that, even if I wasn’t paying attention, that just found their way into my head”
Part of the writing process has involved reading the Bible, he says. “I’ll look for inspiration for themes or stories or characters and to look at the Bible that way, like as a piece of literature. It was interesting to go back and revisit some of the stuff that I was very dismissive about when I was a kid, and maybe didn’t really grasp what some of these messages were. It was an interesting part of doing the research for the show and embedding it in. So I’ll miss that. That was fun.”
It’s a sober notion that might feel a little at odds to the cusses and putdowns McBride dispenses across his screen appearances—the comedy actor has a cadence all his own, speaking with pompous pauses and sentence emphases that would challenge other actors to emulate. Unless they are a big-shot A-lister like the star of The Righteous Gemstones season opener. We’ve been sworn to secrecy, but you’re in for a treat—I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, loving how this household name takes on the facial and conversational rhythms of McBride.
Dancing around the details, I asked McBride how the hell they pulled this coup off. “You know, getting [A-list movie star] was just another miracle. I would have never in a million years guessed that we would have been able to talk him into coming down to Charleston, South Carolina, wear a [spoiler] in 90 degree weather, and get paid next to nothing to do it.” McBride credits his guest star’s appearance to the movie gods—or the television gods,rather (“I think they have a little less power than the movie Gods, but they still are effective”).
McBride’s quick to credit his crew, too, many of whom go back beyond the start of Gemstones to Eastbound and Down and Vice Principals: “There’s a lot of really talented, creative people who, at the end of the day, really, really care about what we’re doing and what we’re making and being able to flex creatively,” he says, noting that every season has moments that feel like he’s daring his production designer or his costume designer to figure out fresh and exciting challenges they haven’t had to do before. “You know, that just takes everyone’s brains, like strategising and figuring out how to stretch the money and figuring out how to be economic and just a little bit of luck.”
As for the season four premiere’s setting and concept, which we’ll also keep vague, McBride recalls having the idea in his head before the season began, and with it being the final run of episodes, this was the time to do it. “You don’t want to leave anything on the table. If we’re getting ready to finish up this world, if there’s any gas in the tank, you want to use it all. But I think ultimately it’s just about making sure the story connects and that this thing completes what it set out to do.”
Reflecting further on getting to the end of Gemstones, “it was a true labour of love” McBride says. “It was a lot of fun making this thing. It means a lot. Ultimately, with creating anything, you know, there has to be an end, and so I think when you’re making something, you’re just constantly hoping you don’t fuck it up. There’s a sense of relief when you reach the end.”
“You never know when something like this is gonna end, right?” adds Cassidy Freeman. “And so you’re always kind of on this precipice of like fear or anxiety or worry. But then, you know, when things keep turning out great, when you reach the finish line, there is a sense of like accomplishment—and sadness that it’s over, but really we’re just so stoked that we all got to do that for so long together.”
What that time also allowed, according to McBride, was to let The Righteous Gemstones evolve a little bit beyond his other work that was more directly focused on misunderstood angry men. “I think a little bit when I started with, like Eastbound, and even The Foot Fist Way, that idea of sort of clowning a certain type of like alpha male, just to me, seemed appealing,” he recalls. “I grew up not as one of those guys, but being amused by guys who acted that way, you know.”
In a lot of comedy, you’re supposed to root for the main character, he observes—but what McBride (and his fans) would find funny was the idea that maybe you should root against the main character. “It just felt like an interesting thing to explore, and I think we did that,” he says. “But I definitely think that as these shows progressed, we didn’t just stay in that lane. We expanded what we’re talking about.”
Is there ever a point where a character is too unlikeable for McBride? “I mean, for sure. It’s a matter of taste. But I also think with all this stuff, if you’re hoping to achieve something with the ending, you have to kind of understand what the parameters are like, what is too far for the audience, what will keep them engaged or keep them invested?” Knowing when the writing is going too far is something McBride feels in his gut: “There’s definitely moments where, when we’re writing, it’ll feel like, ‘You know what? I don’t know if I want to see this person be mean to this person. It makes me not as sympathetic to what they’re going through’. So I do think that there’s constantly that sort of check and balance of, like, what’s going to push the audience too far away, where they’re not going to commit to this journey.”
As the Gemstones’ journey comes to an end, McBride is invited to consider what he’s going to miss most about the show. “Obviously, working with this cast, working with Cassidy [Freeman], with Edi [Patterson], with Adam [Devine], with Tim [Baltz], with John [Goodman]—all of these great people that we’ve had.” Tantalisingly, McBride explains how he loves all these people, and thinks they’re all insanely talented: “So I have a feeling it probably won’t be the last time I work with a lot of them.”
“Gemstones definitely was an ensemble, and it was about family, you know. And I think ultimately, as it’s over, and it’s kind of looked back upon, it has a lot to do with grief, it has a lot to do with letting go—like all we all will have to do eventually—of people we love, and people we care about, and how life has to sort of move on.” For McBride, telling this story with religion as its backdrop acknowledges just what faith offers for a lot of people, “a way of coping with those harsh realities.”
With reality looking harsher, and people in power shittier by the day, The Righteous Gemstones may be saying farewell for good when this season concludes, but McBride thinks the purpose of comedy remains—a chance for people to take a breath, laugh at very serious things, and try to find a new way to think about them. “Whether I’ve been at a funeral or suffered bad news, there’s something that’s such a relief when you have that unexpected moment of laughter with loved ones through tears that helps you understand that ultimately, as much as shit sucks, there probably is a way out of it, you know.”
“I think comedy offers that to people. And so I think when times are tumultuous and people are unsure of the future, I think comedy is more important than ever to just help bring people together and to let people laugh and hopefully to be a little bit, you know, happier in their own lives with what they’re dealing with.”
INTERVIEW EDITED FOR LENGTH AND CLARITY
