Praise Teenjus! Danny McBride adds The Righteous Gemstones to his resume of completed shows on HBO after shows like Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals. The Righteous Gemstones is the first of the shows to be solely created by McBride, but it is also the longest-running at 36 episodes (when compared to Eastbound & Down‘s 29 episode run). Chronicling the behind-the-scenes antics of a family of televangelists and the enemies they have amassed over the decades, The Righteous Gemstones spent its first three seasons putting the wealthy clan in the crosshairs for blackmail, extortion, and various other crimes.
Variety reports on McBride reflecting on the end of the show as the comedic actor closed the doors himself by directing the final episode. McBride explained that the feeling of the conclusion on the show never truly hit him when making the episode since he was trying to get through production. He stated, “Church lunch scenes are always my favorite scenes to shoot. We usually have a whole day to do it, and it’s everyone from the cast there and everyone has fun.” Then, he says that it took a conversation with his co-star, Gregory Alan Williams, to finally wash the feeling over him. “I was so obsessed with just getting it over the finish line that I didn’t really take pause to think about the weight of like, ‘Oh, we’re finished. We’ve done it.’ As soon as we started talking, I was like, ‘F*ck, I’m about to start crying. Is this going to be sad?’”
As over the top as past season endings on the show have gone, McBride and company opted to subvert expectations and go stripped-down for the ending of the series. He expounds that he always thought of bringing everything back to the family itself to face a challenge on their own, “I always had the idea that in the end, they would be tested to see if they ultimately have what it would take to do this job, without monster trucks or jet packs or anything.” Then, he continued to say, “I always imagined that the culmination at the end would be stripped down, simple, back to basics, just praying.”
