If you know a fan of The Righteous Gemstones, say a prayer for them. After four sinful seasons, the show came to an end May 4 on HBO. For longtime vi
If you know a fan of The Righteous Gemstones, say a prayer for them. After four sinful seasons, the show came to an end May 4 on HBO. For longtime viewers, bidding adieu to its cast of stunted but heartfelt televangelists is, to quote Judy Gemstone, “like, horror movie shit, dude!”
A true black comedy, Gemstones turns its lens toward a mega-rich cast of characters who are simultaneously larger than life and achingly real: Eli Gemstone (John Goodman), pastor and family patriarch; his often petulant adult children Jesse (Danny McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Adam DeVine); and their respective spouses, partners, and families. It joins the legacy of Vice Principals and Eastbound & Down before it—shows produced by McBride, Jody Hill, and David Gordon Green about fundamentally flawed but lovable characters.
It’s strenuous to adequately put into words just how sprawling the Gemstones’ evangelical world is. Over four seasons, viewers have been treated to everything from heart-pounding car chases and secret societies to a swarm of locusts, an abundance of full-frontal male nudity, mini-mall churches being erected—and burned to the ground—and a genuinely tear-jerking storyline involving a freak pole-dancing accident and a service monkey. Cast and crew from the show talked to Vanity Fair to celebrate their time spent “misbehavin’” on set and saying goodbye to life on the Gemstone compound. As McBride puts it, “All good things have to come to an end.”
A Comedy of Biblical Proportions
McBride has a talent for creating characters that are ostensibly outrageous—problematic, grating, even maniacal—without ever turning them into caricatures. “Gemstones is really Danny’s baby,” says Hill about his longtime collaborator. It’s a show imbued with a profound humanity; a pain, a hardship, a relatability. And that’s by design. “Making people invested is the point, you know?” says McBride. “Making them see themselves in someone who, from the outside, they would never assume they would see any traits of themselves in. It’s not about trying to create sympathy for those kinds of people—it’s about making something interesting.”
“You have to ground their circumstances in the real world,” says Walton Goggins, who plays Eli Gemstone’s brother-in-law Baby Billy. “Make no mistake about it, Baby Billy is a narcissist…albeit a lovable one. He was funny, yes, but as with all comedy for me, it was underlined with great pain.”
It’s also, always, about getting the laugh. “Danny and the creative team at Rough House [Pictures] are able to walk that line between silly and absurd while keeping the characters grounded,” says DeVine. “Danny would agree—this is a comedy first, and the goal is to make people laugh and forget their problems for a little bit.”
The lively on set was one of both collaboration and trust. Emmy Award–nominated costume designer Christina Flannery says she rarely got notes on her work, which is as rich and singular as the show’s writing. “Sometimes I put my foot in my mouth, like with Teen Demon,” she says of costuming the devil in Baby Billy’s latest endeavor: a television show about Jesus as a teen, called Teenjus. “I found this incredible costume, and it included these stilts. And [the writers] were like, ‘Oh, we have to have the stilts.’ My crew was like, ‘Can you just shut the fuck up, Christina?’” she laughs. “But it obviously turned out great.” On another occasion, Hill came up with an Easter egg for Flannery to nestle into her costume design: He suggested that when the Gemstone kids travel by boat to retrieve their missing father, they wear outfits inspired by the Sea Org uniforms worn by Scientologists.
The show doesn’t aim to ignore the obvious political implications of evangelicalism, nor does it undiscovered the corruption sometimes found in the world of megachurches. But it also doesn’t want to mock or alienate anyone who might see themselves or someone they love in that world. In season two, we learn that Aunt Tiff (Valyn Hall), Baby Billy’s wife, can’t read. “I know people like Aunt Tiff. I have family from the hills. They’re people, and they deserve respect,” says Hall. “And I remember [that conversation] on set, someone saying, ‘I don’t like that they’re making fun of her.’ I said, ‘Do you know what the literacy rate is in America?’ A lot of people have difficulty reading in this country. We’re not making fun of her. It’s part of her reality and it’s part of her humanity. It’s not that she can’t learn—it’s that she hasn’t learned.”
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