The Righteous Gemstones and 5 more Danny McBride hustles

Danny McBride, writer, creator and star of The Righteous Gemstones Season 1-4, grew up in the early 1980s in Virginia. Each Sunday, his mom, Kathy, performed sermons for the kids in the congregation of their tiny Southern Baptist church using simple puppets bought from their local Christian book shop. As more adults in the congregation got into it, they started voicing their own puppets and playing along. The puppet show became a hit, and Danny remembers his family becoming minor celebrities in the church. He also remembered all the focus, work and dedication his mom put into testing her material and figuring out what struck a chord with people and why. More than the puppet shows, her work ethic and how she approached telling people stories influenced his own career as a writer and comedian. 

Danny attended Vacation Bible School in his holidays, and youth group meetings every Wednesday. While he doesn’t attend church much now, it’s not the faithful that he’s taking aim at in his satirical series. It’s not even megachurches themselves. It’s the hypocrisy that creeps in when people treat the church as a business … or in the Gemstones’ case, as a Mafia-like semi-criminal enterprise. Danny focuses a comedic lens on the kind of church that comes with performance appraisals, quarterly profit reports, and the mindset that endless growth is not only possible, but desirable. In that situation, the business of running a business eclipses everything else, giving us some of the show’s most hilarious Gemstone efforts to fleece their flock, including this season’s high-tech Prayer Pods, complete with donation buttons.

In Danny’s character, Jesse, he also takes aim at church families where kids are groomed to take position in the leadership – regardless of whether there’s someone more suited whose calling gets sidelined in favour of keeping their clan at the top of the heap. In the Gemstones’ case, this has been carrying on for generations, so look out for Bradley Cooper playing the OG Gemstone grifter, Elijah Gemstone, who kills and scams his way into becoming a chaplain during the American Civil War in The Righteous Gemstones Season 4! 

Stream The Righteous Gemstones Season 1-4 now on Showmax. New episodes each Monday. While you wait between episodes, try five more of Danny’s projects.

1. Eastbound & Down: Kenny Powers

Failed baseball player and mulleted maniac Kenny has a chip on his shoulder because the world hasn’t delivered on what he believes it promised him – money, fame and the worship of his fans, especially the beautiful women among them. All he has left of his once golden career is the larger-than-life attitude and the conviction, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he’s the pinnacle of masculinity. He’s willing to share that belief with the world through his offensive set of motivational tapes, and his new career as a substitute PE teacher. Watch as he sets about failing his way back up to the top, always choosing the worst course of action possible in any situation – to our hilarity and horror. Delusion level: 100%. PS: look out for the likes of Will Ferrell and Matthew McConaughey joining the fun. 

Classic quote: “I’m not going to stop yelling, because that will mean I lost the fight!’

2. Vice Principals: Neil Gamby

As the series’ writer-creator, Danny wrote both Neil and his idiot twin in this endeavour, co-vice principal Lee Russell (The Righteous Gemstones’ Uncle Baby Billy – Walton Goggins), as if he’d get the chance to play either one of them. The result is a hilarious dark buddy comedy. 

Danny drew on his real-life brief career as an incompetent substitute teacher – and the brush it gave him with men drunk on the tiniest amount of power imaginable – to inspire both this series, and Eastbound & Down. Like Kenny, Neil is a lonely, insecure man who’s blustering to cover it up like a psychotic chihuahua. This petty king’s hope is that the more he growls and snaps, the less likely it’ll be that people will step onto his turf. He considers dominating the people around him and taking charge as school principal to be his righteous mission, with a near religious fervour that any Gemstone would admire.  

Classic quote: “I have a photographic memory. I retained the pertinent informations and discarded the rest.” (Reader, he does not, and he did not).

3. Animals: A turkey called Gregory

Danny flexes his comedy muscles as a voice actor on Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano’s bizarre little HBO animated adult comedy series. He plays Gregory the turkey, who’s out to avenge his wife Sarah’s (Jessica Chastain) death in the Season 1, episode 10. The episode takes place around Thanksgiving and we find out, in brutal detail, what happens to Gregory’s wife before he becomes a Hunger Games-style Turkey revolutionary. Danny commits to the bit 100%. So by the time the unwitting mayor is holding Gregory up the the public after tossing frozen turkeys (the bodies of Gregory’s wife and friends) to the crowd, you’ll be cheering for him to peck out a fat, human neck vein as he cries vengeance with, “This is for Sarah, a beautiful, strong, smart turkey who was also my wife.”

4. Halloween and Halloween Kills

Off-screen Danny was the co-writer and co-executive producer (with his Vice Principles and Eastbound & Down collaborators Jody Hill and David Gordon Green) of the 2018 revival of horror slasher classic Halloween and its 2021 sequel. The film brings back Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, the franchise’s final girl, and returns the story to its original timeline, 40 years after Michael Myers’ original attacks. 

Danny’s Halloween looks at how fear and isolation have warped Laurie’s life after masked killer Michael Myers’ attempt to murder her, while removing the franchise’s problematic revelation that Michael was Laurie’s brother – returning him to his roots as an unknowable horror. The film also stars Judy Greer as Laurie’s daughter Karen, and Andi Matichak as Karen’s daughter, Allyson. 

When the Strode women’s efforts to trap and burn Michael at the end of Halloween fail, Halloween Kills takes us right back into the action on the same night. Laurie calls in help from other characters who survived Michael in the 1978 film, as viral terror spreads through the Haddonfield community, destroying its bonds. Halloween’s original screenwriter and director, John Carpenter, singled out Halloween Kills for his stamp of approval.

5. The Exorcist: Believer

When David Gordon Green got to direct The Exorcist: Believer – the 2023 film set 50 years after the events of the 1973 original, with Ellen Burstyn returning to her role as Chris MacNeil, and Linda Blair returning as her daughter Regan – guess who he tapped as a co-writer? Danny McBride, of course! The story dovetailed neatly with their exploration of religion and exploitation in America’s South in the Righteous Gemstones. In fact, they first started throwing ideas around in the Gemstones editing room, where they came up with the idea of assembling representatives of multiple local faiths and practices. 

In the new film, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr) has raised his daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) as a single dad ever since his pregnant wife died in a Haitian earthquake 12 years back. One day, Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) vanish in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them. As both girls start behaving in truly creepy ways, Victor exhausts every route for answers until he lands on demon possession, and reaches out to Chris MacNeil, who witnessed her daughter Regan’s possession and successful exorcism.  

Happy McBride watching! Stream The Righteous Gemstones Season 1-4 now on Showmax. New episodes Mondays.