Danny McBride Discusses The Righteous Gemstones‘ Final Season and That Fantastic First Episode

The Righteous Gemstones kicked off its fourth and final season last Sunday night with a stand-alone episode starring Bradley Cooper as a Gemstone ancestor during the Civil War. Cooper’s thief-turned-chaplain started the family’s history of using religion as a money-making scam, and the golden Bible he carries throughout the episode becomes a major plot point across the rest of the season. Despite Cooper’s stature, it doesn’t come off as stunt-casting or headline-chasing; Cooper blends in seamlessly with this world, subtly playing his character’s cynicism towards religion, the war, and society in general in a period piece that goes for understated verisimilitude. It’s an audacious start to the show’s last season, with a longer running time than usual, none of the regular cast, and a completely new setting, and an impressive beginning to what might be The Righteous Gemstones‘ best season.

Paste talked to the show’s creator and star Danny McBride about the premiere, how Cooper was cast, and why Gemstones is ending after four seasons, just like his first HBO show, Eastbound & Down. It was a quick chat during a round of short interviews with most of the cast, and in order to keep the content pumping throughout the season we’re going to carve it up into smaller chunks in the weeks ahead. Here’s what McBride told us about that first episode and about the Gemstones family history that he’s slowly revealed throughout the show’s run.

Paste: So why is this the right time to wrap up The Righteous Gemstones?

Danny McBride: You just follow your instincts. It felt like when we started writing this season—you know, every season, we approach as if it could be the end of it, you never know what’s gonna happen or if you’ll be allowed to come back to tell more—and so I’ve always approached every season not really knowing if it was gonna keep going. But as I started the season, it just kind of became apparent when I was seeing what ideas I was gravitating towards. They were all ideas about closure and about moving forward. And it just felt like the story was reaching its logical ending.

Paste: We see more of the Gemstones family backstory this season, dating back to the Civil War. Danny, have you always had an idea of the family history going back as far as we’ve seen, or did that come together as you were mapping out this new season?

Danny McBride: I have had that idea. You know, I grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia, so there’s a lot of Civil War history there. I’ve always been sort of fascinated with history, but especially the Civil War. I’ve always kind of been interested in it and I was driving home one day from work in the third season. And that concept just kind of came to me that, like, the first Gemstone pretended to be a minister and what that would look like if you were to lodge your way into a chaplain job in the Civil War, and it would end up with you giving people their last rites. And if your heart wasn’t in it, how strange that must be. So, yeah, I wrote the first, like, 15 pages of that episode in the third season, and I just kind of put it away. I wasn’t really sure what we were going to do with it. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be just a cold open or not, or be used at all. And as we started crafting the season, I just pulled it out, and it just felt like it was a fun way to kick this season off.

Bradley Cooper in The Righteous Gemstones

Paste: How did you get Bradley Cooper involved in playing that role?

Danny McBride: You know what it was? It was very lucky. It’s similar to like when we got John Goodman involved in the show. I’ll talk to the other producers and casting, and we’ll be like, Well, who do you want in this? And I’ll always find myself describing like, well, you know, I think even with the first episode, I was like, well, somebody like John Goodman would be a perfect example of who the dad could be. And they’re like, Well, why don’t you ask him? You know, I’m never assuming that they would want to come and do it. And then we got Goodman, and this year was the same thing. I knew that it was a tricky proposition to start the season without any of the regular cast and a different time period. And I just knew that whoever that actor was, the whole thing was riding on them, and they had to be strong, and they had to have charisma, and they had to be someone that the audience would be excited to see in this world. And so I think when I was explaining that, I was like, you know, somebody like Bradley Cooper, and once again, my producer partner was just like, why don’t you just ask him? And so we sent him the script, and he responded pretty quickly that he was into it, and I was thrilled. And then he told me that he had never seen Gemstones before, and he was going to hold off on watching it until we were done shooting, because he didn’t want to have it influence his performance, which I thought was pretty awesome. You know, sometimes when you have guest stars on shows, they see what gets laughs in the shows, and sometimes that affects their performance, like sometimes they’ll come in and almost be doing an impression of the people that are in the show. And for this, I appreciate it that he saw that and didn’t want that to be the case. He wanted this performance to stand on its own and feel like something separate. And yeah, it was. It was incredible to get an opportunity to work with him and for him to lend his talents to us.

The Righteous Gemstones airs on HBO and streams on Max at 10 p.m. ET on Sunday nights.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.

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