Danny McBride about that final

Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for the serious final of ‘The Rightous Gemstones’, which now streams at Max.

Eventually “the righteous precious stones” said goodbye, such as only “the righteous gems” could: with a masturbating monkey.

Although the majority of the last episode of the HBO series ‘That Man of God May Comfort’ takes place in the palace -like holiday home of the titular televangelist -family, the last scene that was actually filmed was from the earlier episode. After Sunday services, the precious stones and their entourage are unleashed to Jason’s Steakhouse, the favorite place of the gang to keep the court and hit the salad bar. There, Dr. Watson-de Kapuchin Monkey who acts as a service animal for BJ Barnes (Tim Baltz), a gemstone in-laws who are paralyzed in a freak polar dancing accident and smokes menthol cigarettes while the crowd on eggs. It is a very “gems” mix of creative rough and strange sweet.

“Church lunch scenes are always my favorite scenes to photograph,” says Danny McBride, the maker, star and executive producer of the four-seasons comedy. (McBride also directed the final, sharing script credit with old employees John Carcieri and Jeff Fradley.) “We usually have a whole day to do it, and it is everyone of the cast there and everyone has fun.” But that day last fall, McBride was not in the mood to stop and smell the roses. He only tried to achieve a debilitating production that had already sustained calamities as the destruction of Hurricane Helene on the ‘precious stones’ home base of South Carolina. Even that day Baltz heard that his mother had had a car and he was not sure if he could complete the scene.

“Ik was zo geobsedeerd om het alleen maar over de finishlijn te krijgen dat ik niet echt pauze heb genomen om na te denken over het gewicht van Like: ‘Oh, we zijn klaar. We hebben het gedaan,” “herinnert McBride zich. Maar toen trok Gregory Alan Williams, die edelstenen Consigliere Martin speelt, hem opzij om zijn dankbaarheid te uiten. “Zodra we begonnen te praten, dacht ik: ‘Fuck, ik Stand to cry. Will this be sad? “

Viewers may have had a similar question in mind while watching the last minutes of “that man of God can be complete.” In recent seasons, “The Rightous Edelstones” has grown up before he goes home; In the final of season 3, a literal scourge of grasshoppers on a TV studio drops and speeds up to the ground. But the latest action set of the series is dramatic, frightening. Furious due to the recent loss of his father, despite his role in it, Family Friend Corey Milsap (Seann William Scott) goes on a disaster by the Gemstone Lake House Galilee Gulch, who all three brothers and sisters injured – Jesse (McBride), Judy (Adam Defin) – Via Gunnschot. For several painful minutes we have left to wonder if this could really be the end for them, only for Dr. Watson to save the day when he removes Jesse’s gun from his cross-body bag for men. (It’s certain not a wallet.)

McBride actually wanted to mess with his audience. “Maybe it’s just because, as people, we are all sick,” he says. ‘But if a show ends, my first kneecap [response] Is like: “Who are they going to kill?” It felt nice to play with that concept and really attach it to it. “That meant a small -scale climax than” the righteous gems “had left in the past:” It should feel spooky. It should feel scary and disturbing and strangely grounded for how ridiculous it is. “

But there was also a thematic reason to leave the gems on their own for their last challenge. “I have always had the idea that they would eventually be tested to see if they eventually have what is needed to do this work, without sample cars or jet packs or something,” says McBride, referring to a few stunts that the series has reached in the past. “I always thought that the highlight would be undressed at the end, simple, back to basics, just pray.” So after subjecting Corey, the trio prays for him while he dies. The gemstone children already share authority about the empire of their families of millions of dollars. Here, however, they work together on the fundamental mission that is supposed to endorse all glitter, glamor and prayer spods: offer spiritual guidance to the eternal souls of congregants.

The moment also calls back to the season premiere, a delivery length of flashback with Bradley Cooper as ancestor Elijah, a thief who accidentally becomes a confederated chaplain and finds God on the way. McBride wrote the cold open of the premiere – in which Elia kills a preacher while robs his collecting window and then adopts his identity – a few years ago. It took until the house of the series to find a place to place the scene and to extend the idea to an explanation of not only where the gems come from, but who they are.

“They have this roundabout way to achieve justice,” says Carcieri, an old McBride’s employee dating from their days in the film school. (He continues to represent the University of North Carolina via the T-shirt on our Zoom.) “So many of the things they do are misled and not on the right track, but in the heart of everything they still believe in God, and they still pray seriously.” Just like a career-criminal Elijah, whose gilded Bible was passed on by the generations, a sincere believer could be by praying for soldiers who are about to be executed, his offspring can be their best themselves by helping a lost soul who just tried to kill them.

“This is who they are, in their blood and in their bones, and this is their legacy,” says Patterson, who wrote for the show next to the leading role in it. ‘They gathered around [Corey]Praying for him-I think that in a sense it is even greater than a complete, massive action thing. It is strange more punch. “

The entire series unfolds in Galilee Gulch, played in the show by a mansion on Lake Murray, just outside the capital of Columbia, which happens to be the largest single -family home in South Carolina, on around 18,000 square feet. Finding the house was a huge challenge for McBride and locations manager Kale Murphy; The first candidates were not distinctive enough of the other homes of the precious stones, and the search took so long that McBride almost called HBO to ask for a break in production. But in a miracle that only fits for a show about religion, Murphy held the owners of the country house, who agreed to have the crew of the ‘gems’ taken over for two whole weeks. Even better, the house happened to contain a 16th-century altar imported from a church in England and reused in a fireplace. The piece became the background of Corey’s great death scene.

The Lake House was a corner of both Southern Bourgeois Culture and Gemstone Lore that McBride and his team wanted to explore. “One thing I always found cool at the first three ‘Star Wars’ films was that they would take those characters” and they would bring them in radically different environments, says McBride. “These are those characters in the snow. These are those characters in the jungle.” I was always looking for: “Where have we never seen the gems before?” “Galilee Gulch also played in the other code trauma of Gemstone Kids: they have not been visited since the loss of their mother, Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles), just before the events of the show. Leaving a house of that size untouched is an act of thoughtless extravagance. It is also partially an understandable act of sorrow.

“We have always known that the show was about dealing with loss – how to persist like a family, although they have lost their matriarch,” says Carcieri. Another loose thread with which the writers had played for years before weaving in the last season was a romantic storyline for Paterfamilias Eli (John Goodman) in a definitive act of further. Eli eventually saves a romance with Corey’s mother Lori (Meghan Mullally), the best friend and musical employee of Aimee-Leigh. That storyline gave us the gift of Karen Walker and Sulley of “Monsters Inc.” In a passionate 69 and closure for a family unit that misses his center of gravity.

“The righteous gems” has always been a large tent that includes different genres at the same time. It is partly a musical and has one of the most ambitious action on television on this side of ‘The Last of Us’. In essence, however, the show is a comedy, and regardless of the parallels with “follow -up” as the saga of three brothers and sisters who bicker over the empire of their aging father, it would never end as a note like Kendall Roy.

After the confrontation at Galilee Gulch, the ultimate end of “The Rightaire Gemstones” at the wedding of Kelvin with Keefe (Tony Cavalero), his best friend became a partner as soon as the deeply suppressed youngest gem comes out of the closet. Kelvin’s sexuality is accepted with ease that may be surprising for a group of Evangelicals from Red State, but leaves every gemstone child in a happy, healthy, stable relationship. Even Eli and Lori decide to try things again, despite the role of the gems in the death of her son and insulting ex-husband.

“Ultimately, the nice thing about the precious stones they win,” says Patterson, laughing. “Do what you want. You can’t let them win.”

McBride played with the idea of ​​giving the gems some last coming for their many shortcomings as people. (Only this season did they have Keef-Dress in Drag as the Spirit of Aimee-Leigh to keep Eli from dating Lori.) “There were always thoughts about it:” Is the church down? Are they being arrested? And as in the end, for me, I don’t know if I really want to see that, “he remembers. “The design is for me, I want people to look at this again, and I want it to be something that ultimately feels nice.”

Although he makes jokes that his next plan is to ‘probably make a sandwich’, McBride would like to move to the next series that will join ‘Gemstones’, ‘Vice Principals’ and ‘Eastbound & Down’ in an uninterrupted chain of the much -praised HBO series. Together with Patterson and author Grady Hendrix, he is Develop an adjustment From the novel “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Saying Vampires.” What it also makes now, however, it will be in combination with the team of Rough House Pictures, the production house McBride is co-founder of David Gordon Green and Jody Hill, whose informal selection consistent attendees such as Carcieri and a local crew of South Carolina often contains project to project.

This relative consistency in an inconsistent industry has contributed to the choice to terminate ‘the righteous gems’ on its own conditions. “Whatever we do, those people will be part of it,” says Carcieri. So as bittersweet as it is to say goodbye: “I have faith in the talented people with whom we work that we come up with something good.” By the way, McBride wrote the pilot of “The Rightous Gemstones” in 2017; Between four seasons, two strikes and a pandemic, making the show has taken eight years of the life of the Rough House crew, making them enthusiastic about an empty slate. “When we wrote that episode of the Civil War, it flowed like water,” Carcieri adds, “only because we were writing in this new setting, with new characters.”

“It is part of the reason why I wanted to place a pin in ‘precious stones’ for the time being, because I see how much time making a story and making a show,” says McBride. It doesn’t matter how much pleasure he has had with this demented, selfish, somewhat more grown, but by no-my-mingle-adult people, he makes the choice of the UN Admstones to say that he now has enough: “There are more stories I want to tell, and more things I want to do.”