McBride’s minister aunt inspired ‘Gemstones’
LOS ANGELES — Danny McBride doesn’t mind doing the heavy comedy lifting when he’s creating TV shows such as “Eastbound & Down” or “Vice Principals.” The approach has worked; both productions found success.
Things are a little different with McBride’s latest creation, HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones.” He’s looking to share some of the load with the story of a world-famous televangelist family who mixes devotion with deviance, greed with God and cheating with charitable work.
“We leave a lot of the work up to the audience to sort of figure out where you align with these people, where you disagree with them, where you agree with them,” McBride says. “I think to an extent, they all are believers. I do think that they all believe in what they’re saying, but I think they have a different relationship with faith.
“I also think they’re so privileged that they exist in this realm where their image of themselves is that they’ve somehow almost transcended judgment themselves. I think that this operation has gotten so big that everyone to an extent has lost their way.“
Two generations of the family will be judged by the audience. Jesse (McBride), the eldest of three grown siblings, looks to take over for his father, but his past sins could destroy the ministry. Jesse’s brother, Kelvin (Adam DeVine), and sister, Judy (Edi Patterson), are dealing with their own problems.
The family and spiritual (and at times criminal) leader of the family, Eli (John Goodman), is reaching his own crisis point with the loss of his wife, Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles).
How the Gemstones live tests the limits of living a righteous life, but McBride didn’t create “The Righteous Gemstones” as an antireligious show. The Georgia native grew up in a religious household, going to a Baptist church three nights a week where his mother did puppet ministry. And his aunt is a minister in Atlanta.
“When I say that we’re not taking aim at people’s faith, I’m being honest. I’m not just saying it to try to shy away from controversy. It wasn’t a goal of mine. I wanted to make something that my aunt, who’s a minister, could watch and find the humor in as well,” McBride says. “I don’t think she’ll appreciate the language or the drug use.
“But I think ultimately, I’m not taking a swipe at her or what she believes in. I’m setting a story in a world that she is familiar with, and ultimately it’s a story about a family, and about a family who has grown very, very successful and have lost their way along the way, and I think that that’s relatable.”
“The Righteous Gemstones” ends up being like past creations for McBride. It’s not the major elements that interest him, but the minutiae of the work that grabs his attention. He tends to tap into those small areas that never end up in a job description because those are the things that come across as relatable.
The idea of focusing on how to take down a pastor who seems more inclined to break the Ten Commandments rather than teaching them might not seem new, but McBride argues the opposite. He has taken a different approach to this holier-than-thou scenario.
“The goal of it is not to be like a takedown of anything. I do feel like when Hollywood decides to take on religion, I think they make the deathly mistake of like lampooning people for their beliefs, which is not something I’m really interested in doing,” McBride says. “I don’t know enough about what I believe in order to go and pass judgment on other people. So, for us, it’s about lampooning a hypocrite.”