‘The Righteous Gemstones’ Creator Danny McBride Talks About Closing the (Good) Book on the Series

The end is nigh. HBO and creator Danny McBride announced today that The Righteous Gemstones—TV's greatest televangelist-pastor action comedy, whose epic first three seasons gave us a massive wave-pool baptism gone awry, the phrase “some guys I do car pranks with,” a lengthy and jaw-dropping fight sequence featuring full-frontal male nudity, and the cultural inflection point that was Walton Goggins and Jennifer Nettles singing “Misbehavin’”—will end after its fourth season, which premieres in March.

When the news hit, we sat for a few moments in silent prayer, then got on the phone with McBride to find out why he and his Gemstones crew are forsaking us, what we can expect from season four, and where he wants to go next.

GQ: I think some people will be surprised to hear that you’re wrapping the show up after this season. So talk to me about how this decision was reached.

Danny McBride: God told me it was time. That we had achieved what we needed to do. [laughs].

I don't know—it felt natural. I wrote the pilot for [Righteous Gemstones] in 2017, so when I finish up post [on Season 4], I'll have been on this show for almost eight years. It doesn't seem like that, because we had a pandemic in the middle and a strike. But, yeah—the story came to me, and it felt like it was a story that was bringing all these themes and these ideas and these characters to a conclusion, to something that felt like completion.

So I just followed my instincts and approached the season that way as I dove into it, and I'm really happy with what we've turned out. There's a lot of unexpected twists and turns, and some incredible payoffs for the characters, for the growth of some of these people. I'm really excited to see what people think about this thing being all wrapped up.

Jake Giles Netter/Courtesy of HBO

In the beginning, when you started writing this show, did you have anything in mind as to where you wanted to take the show if you got to do three or four seasons?

I had an idea of where I wanted the characters to go. I’ve always had that idea of what this show would add up to. But every season we do—I've said it before, but the thing that I really get annoyed with [about] television is investing all that time in a season for it to all just be delayed gratification—that everything that's promised is just teased out to follow next [season]. I like watching a season of something that feels complete and feels like it's a full story. That was a rule we put upon ourselves when we wrote each of these seasons—that we would never rely on a cliffhanger, that whatever story we started we would complete by the end of that season.

You could watch some of these seasons independently. Obviously understanding these characters and having the backstory, it improves your investment in it. But we really wanted to bite off stories that can be told in this time period. Gemstones, every season has been nine episodes, and some episodes are an hour. That's so much time to tell a story that it seems ridiculous to take four hours and not be able to give people a climax. [Sly smile.]

Sure. Although a lot of TV shows do exactly that.

Yeah, they do. I think it's why I don't watch a lot of TV.

Jake Giles Netter/Courtesy of HBO

The season three finale certainly felt like it could have been a series finale—particularly the coda, where everybody takes turns crushing things with the Redeemer. People might have been bummed if you'd called it there, but they wouldn't have felt shortchanged.

Well, you never know what's going to happen, so I always try to make sure that every season has that feeling—that if something outside of my control ever happened and I wasn't able to complete the story, the biggest tragedy would be that if the show ended prematurely and it discouraged people down the road from wanting to watch it or see what we've done. I feel that if you're relying on what's coming next, I think that's a cheap trick to get people to invest in it.

I ultimately want people to watch this more than once. We take a lot of time with the layers of this, with the type of comedy, with the nuance, because I just feel like shows that I've loved in the past, it's not something that I've just watched week to week. It's something I've watched week to week, and then I've gone back and revisited it just like I would a movie I like. With Eastbound and Vice Principals—I still think people find those shows to this day, and I think it was because we were able to take both of them to a conclusion and present a complete story for people.

Years ago, there was a lot of talk about how The Sopranos was the Great American Novel in TV-series form. I remember feeling like you’d achieved something equally novelistic with Eastbound and Down—that Kenny Powers was kind of the great American protagonist of his moment. But now that we’re closing the book on Gemstones, I wonder if you see these three shows—Eastbound, Gemstones and Vice Principals, collectively—as parts of one big story in any way.

It does in some ways, definitely. We sold the pilot to Eastbound in 2006, so this is almost 20 years of making television with HBO. This is our 10th season of television that we've made with them. And there's been a lot of growing up that's happened during that time period. We went from being absolute nobodies in this industry to, like—Gemstones, I think is one of the most expensive comedies that HBO has ever made. That journey has been awesome.

And the idea that I've been on that journey with some of the same exact collaborators from the beginning till the end. Richard Wright, the production designer on the pilot of Eastbound, is the production designer [on Gemstones]. Our music supervisor, our guys who do score, Jody [Hill] and David [Gordon Green] who direct—there's so many faces and talents that have been involved in all these that it definitely feels like it's [part] of a whole. It's of this group's endeavors, I guess.

Connie Chornuk/Courtesy of HBO

But—and not to get too lofty about it, because it is a rude comedy and that’s part of what’s so great about it, that you never let go of that—it feels to me like you’ve taken up bigger and bigger American themes across these three shows. And all three of them are, in a way, about guys fighting for this scrap of something they feel like they’re owed.

For sure. And even just where we set these stories. It’s all these different pillars of American culture. Eastbound is about celebrity and fame. And the second one [Vice Principals] is set in the world of education, and the third is religion. These are all pillars of American culture, and there's a certain expectation about what happens in those worlds. It's a ripe setting to undercut that and poke holes in what's expected and populate it with characters you wouldn’t expect to find in those zones.

It’s what I loved about Vice Principals, even if it made people uncomfortable in the moment. Looking back, it feels so prescient about the climate of white male grievance we were about to enter into, but by the time it was on the air…

…people were seeing it in real time. Yeah.

I’m trying to get you talking like David Simon here.

[McBride laughs] It’ll never happen. I’ll let other people explain it.

You’ve made The Wire, but with monster trucks.

I’ll take it.

Jake Giles Netter/Courtesy of HBO

What’s been the best thing about the time you’ve spent making this show?

I’ve loved working on Gemstones. When I left Los Angeles and moved to Charleston in 2017, that was my whole idea: Can I work outside of Los Angeles? Can I create a film community outside of there? And I moved here and then instantly was inspired to write Gemstones based on living here and looking at the culture around here. My daughter walked for the very first time in the sanctuary set of The Righteous Gemstones. There are so many memories and so many things that have happened over the course of these several years.

Even just shooting Gemstones and COVID shuts us down, and then we're all, during COVID, figuring out if we're going to come back to finish the show. But I remember that when I moved to Charleston, what was really exciting about coming here was the idea that after Eastbound, I went right into Vice Principals, and then Vice Principals was its own endeavor, and then that was this moment in time where suddenly, my brain was free to think about whatever I wanted to think about. And it was a really awesome feeling to do that and to not know what Gemstones was going to be and define that and define those characters. And I'm really looking forward to that now, as this show wraps up—to clearing the desk and then just figuring out, what do I want to talk about next? Who do I want to get to know and who do I want the world to meet?

And it's exciting. It's the most rewarding thing about writing anything. I feel so lucky that I've been able to work with people like HBO and be given the latitude to make all this crazy shit and to build these worlds out with all these characters, and to do it with friends and trusted collaborators. I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

Jake Giles Netter/Courtesy of HBO

Can you talk in vague but tantalizing ways about this fourth season? What are you excited for people to see?

Obviously all the familiar faces are back, and we have some pretty awesome stuff for all of them, but we have some new members of the cast that are joining us—Megan Mullally, Seann William Scott. We have some fun people who came down to Charleston to play with us, and I'm stoked for people to see what they've created. Ultimately, this is a family drama. You're following the ins and outs and the growth of these people, and so this season is no different.

When we pick up, Baby Billy has found more success than we've ever seen him before. Bible Bonkers is a smash hit and he's got big plans for what he wants his follow-up to be.

After coming out of the closet, Kelvin has found a way to monetize being out of the closet, and he's created his own prayer group that's open to people of all lifestyles—like he says, the pink money spends just the same as green. And so he's found a venture that's really working well for him, and of course this bristles Jesse. Because Jesse, as the first-born [son], feels like he should be the most successful, but he's watching other people start casting shadows that he wasn't expecting.

Judy and BJ deal with an unexpected tragedy this season that tests their relationship and their love. And then, ultimately, the patriarch, Eli—we meet him in a much, much different place than we've ever seen him in seasons past, and he's definitely going through some things in his life and trying to figure out how to take the next steps into whatever lays ahead for him, but because he's a Gemstone and because his kids are psychopaths, that will not be as easy as it should be.

We take some massive swings this season with some stuff I don’t think the audience is going to see coming, and I’m very excited to see how it plays.

Jake Giles Netter/Courtesy of HBO

When you're writing these things—particularly a season like this, that you know is going to be an ending—is it hard to strike that balance between giving people a satisfying resolution and letting these characters find happiness, versus having them learn nothing and continue to be children, which is so much of what this show is about comedically?

It's always just finding that balance. Even when you're approaching a finale—we would find ourselves constantly pulling stuff out that felt too sentimental. Where you're like, "This feels like it's well aware that it's a finale." We're giving people moments that I don't think the audience is even looking for. So I think we're constantly aware of that—of not selling out, at the end, what this is supposed to be.

You ended last season with a plague of locusts and an orgy of monster-truck-based destruction. Are you consciously trying to write something that HBO will balk at the scope of?

Always. In a weird way, you do it with everybody you're collaborating with. Just knowing what these actors are capable of, I love trying to concoct situations and scenarios for them to push them into realms that they're maybe uncomfortable with, or haven't thought that they could pull off, and it's the same with our production team. Richard Wright, who's our production designer, I went to college with him and he was the DP on all my student films. We've collaborated for years and years, and he's such a creative force, and I think about that in the writing. I think about sets and I think about stuff that he's going to be tasked with building, and I try to figure out stuff that he hasn't done before or something that might be scary out of the gate, but knowing he has the abilities to meet the moment. And I think it's what keeps making this show fun, is constantly pushing everyone involved to give more than what they've given before.

Jake Giles Netter/Courtesy of HBO

You’ve been one of the leads in each of the three shows you’ve made for HBO. Do you think you’re going to be in the next thing you do? Is that important to you?

It's important less and less than it used to be. I enjoy acting and I enjoy being in this, but I feel like ultimately, my real passion is just in storytelling, creating these worlds, taking people on this ride. Affecting people in unexpected ways. That is, really, what I enjoy the most. And I directed more episodes of this season, so I think I'll always want to definitely be involved in creating and shaping anything that I'm doing, and whether that's also in front of the camera—I think if it feels like something I haven't done before, then I would be more apt for it I think.

I get that. But also, I feel like nobody else out there is writing parts this good for a Danny McBride type of actor.

Trust me. I see the attempts.