Danny McBride Closes His Latest Chapter

The May 4 series finale of HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones marked the end of a grand experiment for its creator and star. Tired of the whiplash that came with shooting his previous series Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals back east, Danny McBride and his wife formally relocated to Charleston, South Carolina, with their two sons in 2017. That’s where he wrote, filmed and finished his end of postproduction on all four seasons of the megachurch comedy.

“Nobody would ever let us shoot in town,” McBride says of Los Angeles. “We were always just barely given permission to do stuff. And we had to find the rebates. It got to the point where it was like, ‘Why are we living in L.A. just to work in a writers room?’ ”

As California production tanks, it’s hard to not look at McBride’s move as ahead of its time. The actor and showrunner, who moonlights as a feature screenwriter, has cultivated a creative community in his port city of just 150,000 that’s ready to work on whatever project he sells next. Zooming in from his home, batting away cats Chacho and Dr. Ned Biscuits, McBride talks about why he chose to end Gemstones when he did, his illuminating lessons from working with Jason Blum and why he thinks that theaters, not movies, might be the industry’s biggest problem.

Seven years in, what are the pros and cons of being so far from the epicenter of the business?

I was not coming up with a lot of ideas in L.A. I’d get in the car and just be fucking angry the whole time — people cutting me off, it taking an hour to get somewhere. When I’d go back to the South, I’d take these car rides, and my whole mindset was different. It’s allowed for so much creative thinking. My worry was that I wouldn’t have anybody to talk to about movies, but a lot of my collaborators moved out here, too.

Don’t you find that people everywhere want to talk about the entertainment industry?

Totally. With Land of the Lost, Will Ferrell and I were doing press as we kind of knew that the opening box office looked bad. Will said, “Just try to enjoy the weekend and not pay attention to the numbers.” I went down to Virginia to hang out with my buddies and tune out. And we’re in some backwoods bar in the middle of fucking nowhere and these two dudes come up to me like, “Whew, man, you guys are getting your fucking ass kicked this weekend!” That was an eye-opener.

Gemstones was the first project you filmed in Charleston after moving there. How did your relationship with the town change?

When I was a kid growing up in Spotsylvania, Virginia, the movie industry seemed so far away. I used to go with my parents to pay the cable bill because I felt like maybe that was somehow connected to Hollywood. To bring something like this here, to watch people that never had any ambitions of being involved in film get involved, it’s one of the things I’ve loved the most.

One could say that Gemstones caps a trilogy of you lampooning a certain type of man for HBO. Do you see it that way?

There is a sense with these guys I’ve played, that they hold on to these old, traditional ideas of masculinity and believe they’re owed something. I like to challenge those concepts.

Adam McKay once described your roles this way: “Danny knows he comes off like a guy who, if you cut him off in the parking lot of a Sam’s Club, would key your car while you’re in there shopping.”

I’ll take it! If that’s how McKay perceives me, then he’s fucking right. And I will key his car. (Laughs.) Look, I think that’s fun. If I can portray a certain type of person, be the butt of the joke, maybe that is an essential piece of my comedy.

Your wife’s uncle is Cheech Marin. Did you get any advice, early on?

My wife [Gia Ruiz] and I started dating in 2002. I had been to a few family Thanksgivings, Easters, and seen Cheech but was too intimidated to say anything. Then it came to the point where I’m making stoner movies, too. I have the confidence to speak to Cheech! And I remember he told me, “Comedians usually get about seven movies. Once everyone knows your moves, they’re ready for the next guy.”

And that resonated?

I think I was on movie five at that point. So I was like, “I better figure this out.” (Laughs.) It’s true and has nothing to do with talent. Audiences can only like something for so long, so the goal shouldn’t be to always have their attention. But when you have the moment, give ’em what you’re there for. So, I made sure that I wasn’t going to just show up as a bit character in 30 movies.

Living outside of the L.A.-New York bubble, what do you think Hollywood is getting wrong about the movies it chooses to make?

In some regard, it’s not about finding what the audience wants to see. It’s about reestablishing why it’s important to go to movies in the first place. In L.A. or New York, you still have these badass movie theaters that have state-of-the-art sound and screens. I’ll buy a ticket to a theater around here, and it feels like you’re in a halfway house. There’ll be movies where I’ll go in, see what screen it’s on and walk right out because I know that the speaker hums or there’s a smell in there.

I have experienced this.

In these suburban towns, they built all these big 16-screen mega plexes in the late nineties, and now those places, feel like relics of a bygone era. There’s six movies playing in there. It feels like you’re in the fall of Rome. Even if what’s Hollywood is making is good, it’s hard to convince people to not watch it in the comfort of their home and their massive TV set when they might go and spend all this money for 30 minutes of commercials and the projectionist to forget to turn the lights off.

You worked on updates of the Halloween and Exorcist franchises. What did you learn from playing with high-stakes IP?

Working with Jason Blum was eye-opening. We’d have meetings with Universal and his team would be like, “What would you need to see in a trailer to help sell this movie?” Then we’d see if we could incorporate those moments in an organic way. It had always been so backward for me, where we’d make something and marketing is like, “We don’t know how to sell this movie.” Having that conversation beforehand can save you a lot of headache and maybe help you define what the movie is.

In 2018, Kanye West famously visited you in Charleston with an idea for you to portray him in a biopic. Is there a postscript to that story?

After he left, I sent him a text, just a, “Thanks a lot for coming down. I’ll put my head on this, see if I can come up with anything.” He wrote back and said that he had a great time and that he’ll remember that day forever. And that was the last time we spoke.

OK, now for that finale. The Gemstones characters had a tendency to constantly fall back into bad habits. But you left them all having shown some legitimate growth. Was that important to you?

Every season these characters have a little bit of growth. You assume that they’ll be on the right path and you come back the next season, but then they’ve fallen into other ego traps. For me, growth is important. There is a formula for some comedy where people don’t want something different. They just want the same thing every episode because it’s comforting. And I appreciate that kind of comedy, but,for me, this was more story driven. If the characters were at the same exact place that they were when the show started in, it wouldn’t feel like we had gone on the journey. There had to be growth. And that’s part of the reason why I think it’s a good time to wrap it up as well. You don’t want to keep teaching lessons and then they instantly forget them. It disables your ability to sort of land a true catharsis.

What actor character are you going to miss writing to the most?

All of them, but I love writing for Keefe (Tony Cavalero). I love writing for Baby Billy (Walton Goggins). Everybody is so much fun. Eastbound was such a singular show. All of the focus was around Kenny. We got to play around with the buddy dynamic on VPs. It’s been so fun have this many characters. I’m a father and I’m a husband — so to explore some of those insecurities and the things that I encounter in my life or have witnessed… it’s been a great outlet.

How old are your kids and what in your body of work have they seen?

My son is 13, and my daughter is 10. They’ve seen Kung Fu Panda, Angry Birds, Land of the Lost, and honestly, all of Gemstones. Really, they have. I’ll try to not have them see it, but they always end up watching. They like it! And my daughter is actually a lot like Judy (Edi Patterson), so maybe she appreciates seeing herself in there.

Speaking of Edi, you were developing a TV series based on Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. What’s the latest there?

We haven’t gotten much momentum on it. Even at HBO, it’s tough making a 30-minute show ensemble that mixes genres. Really difficult. I love that property and would love to do something with it, but I don’t know. We worked on it for a bit and we weren’t getting the reaction to it that we were wanting. it’s sort of floating out there right now.

It’s basically Desperate Housewives meets True Blood in Charleston. Doesn’t seem like a tough sell.

Yeah, it’s all here. To me, it’s a no-brainer. I feel like HBO should just want to go greenlight that now. We should have moved right into shooting the pilot after we wrapped Gemstones. Maybe it’s just not what they’re looking for right now.

Ok, before we say goodbye to Gemstones, Walton Goggins got thrown a lot of wild material on this show. Did he ever say no to anything?

You know what? He didn’t. I think at this point I’ve earned his trust, so he was always [in]. And I think the more that Walton can show digital penis, the better.

A version of this story appears in the May 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.