The Righteous Gemstones are raising holy hell one last time on their fourth and sadly their last season on HBO.
They’ve got a Capuchin monkey, male pole dancing, a dick double for Baby Billy’s full frontal nudity scenes and an Oscar winner among its guest stars.
And that’s just the beginning for the Danny McBride-created comedy featuring John Goodman as the patriarch of a superstar televangelist family whose kids (played by McBride, Edi Patterson and Adam Devine), their kids and assorted relatives run outrageously amok living and preaching the word of God.
Before the premiere of Season 4, cast members sat down with the media to answer burning questions, like how in the world did they get Bradley Cooper to become a Gemstone.
McBride said it was a big swing getting an actor with such charisma and charm, one the audience would be excited to see.
“We sent him the script and he responded very quickly in response to the material. And interesting enough, he had never even seen the show before,” McBride said. “And then he said he didn’t want to watch it until he was done because he didn’t want it to influence what he was going to do. He wanted to make it his own thing, which I respected and thought was great.”
No more spoilers there, but other guest stars this season include Megan Mullally, who plays the best friend of the late Aimee-Leigh, the matriarch of the family whose memory is honored in some very memorable ways. Seann William Scott plays her son Corey, who grew up with the Gemstones, and is particularly good friends with McBride’s Jesse.
After putting together such a tremendous cast, including Walton Goggins as Baby Billy, Tony Cavalero, Cassidy Freeman and Tim Baltz, McBride said it’s bittersweet to see the series come to an end.
“But there’s also a massive sense of feeling like we accomplished something,” he said. “The entertainment industry is very fragile and the idea that the show has managed to survive through COVID, through strikes and we were able to still tell the story we wanted to tell and ended on our terms and then wrap it up in a way that is fulfilling and satisfying, it feels good.”
The cast paid tribute to McBride for nailing the final season in a way that can only be described as Gemstone-esque.
“I truly believe that this season is the best and it wraps up in such a way that I think everyone is gonna be very satisfied,” said Devine, who plays Kelvin. “And I’m not happy that it ended, but we stuck the landing so hard.”
For Patterson, who plays Judy and is also a writer on the show, her character went through a voyage of personal development during the program’s run, while also spouting some of its funniest lines.
“I feel like she had constant sort of almost real-life level growth. If you think about how people grow in real life, it’s not a lot…it’s so incremental. I’ve gotten to do a ton of increments of that with Judy and I love where she ends up, that she can actually be totally selfless in loving someone,” she said. “I think it was a journey to get there.”
Baltz, portraying Judy’s husband BJ, has had his own unexpected journey, some of it involving athleticism. Yes, the rumors are true. He learned to pole dance, and the training wasn’t easy, but he pulls it off in high style. And then there’s his close encounter with a monkey.
“When you French kiss a capuchin, it’s not really like kissing you,” Baltz admits. “It’s not about lips. Their tongue goes straight into your mouth, even if you hold your mouth shut.”
Goggins arrived on the set straight from a grueling, six-month shoot in Thailand for The White Lotus, which also airs on HBO on Sunday nights, putting him in the unique position of starring in back-to-back shows.
Returning to his character of Baby Billy was a bit of a shock to the system after playing the troubled Rick Hatchett, but the outrageous costumes helped reorient his mindset. And so did the frontal nudity, for which private parts doubles of older men had to be cast.
“You don’t have to request for Goggins to go for it at all. He is always going for it,” McBride said. “We felt like it was full circle. When we first met that character, his penis was exposed and so we felt for the last season, of course, you need to show that again.”
So it’s a wild, yet divine, ride for everyone, beginning with Goodman’s complete and somewhat shocking new lifestyle. You’ll see, starting March 9, streaming on Max.
