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From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend.
I'm Tanya Mosley.
Today, Rami Youssef.
His new animated comedy series Number One.
Happy Family USA is about an Egyptian-American Muslim family living in New Jersey after 9-11 trying to blend in and doing everything they can to avoid being seen as a threat.
At the heart of the story is a middle schooler dealing with a double dose of paranoia.
Is Courtney the popular girl talking about me behind my back and are the phones tapped?
You know, and usually people just have to deal with the Courtney part.
Also, Danny McBride talks about his HBO series The Righteous Gemstones, about a wildly dysfunctional family of televangelists fighting for power, influence and their father's approval.
We get into what keeps drawing him to these hilariously flawed, emotionally stunted characters, and he shares the surprising inspiration behind the signature swagger his characters always seem to carry.
George Jefferson, he honestly is like one of my favorite characters when I was a kid.
Like I just thought he was so funny and how mean he was and funny he was and that little bit of a swagger he had.
That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
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This is Fresh Air Weekend.
I'm Tanya Mosley.
Here's our first interview with Terry Gross.
My guest Rami Youssef started as a stand-up comic.
Then he created and starred in the semi-autobiographical comedy-drama series called Rami, about a 20-something Egyptian-American Muslim trying to make sense of how his life, including his sex life, fit with his commitment to Islam.
The series won a Peabody Award, and he won a Golden Globe for his performance.
Youssef co-created the comedy-drama series Mo, starring his friend Mo Amr as an undocumented Palestinian-American.
Last year, Youssef hosted Saturday Night Live and had an HBO comedy special called More Feelings.
His acting career is taking off.
He stars with Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman in the new HBO movie Mountainhead, which debuts May 31st.
It was written and directed by Jesse Armstrong, the creator of HBO's Succession.
In 2023, Youssef co-starred in the film Poor Things, which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture.
Rami Youssef has a new animated series set just before and after 9-11.
It's about an extended family of Egyptian-Americans in New Jersey.
The parents and grandparents are immigrants.
The children were born in America.
Each of them is trying to figure out how to respond to the Islamophobia that's resulted from the terrorist attack on 9-11.
Rami Youssef was 11 years old and in fifth grade on 9-11.
That's about the same age as the boy in the series.
The series is called Number One Happy Family USA, and that's streaming on Amazon Prime.
In the father's attempt to prevent people from noticing they're an immigrant family and Muslim, he does his best to blend in by doing his best to construct the image of a happy, average American family.
But because he doesn't quite understand American culture, just about everything he does to fit in is wrong, which only makes him stand out even more.
The mother wants to stand up and defend Islam.
This is a scene from the first episode, which takes place on 9-11, when the father and mother clash over how to respond.
Rami Youssef does the voices of the father and the son.
Salma Hindi voices the mother.
Busa Rumi, a lot happened today.
Many people got hurt.
This is the worst thing I have ever seen.
Things are going to change for us.
People are going to look at us differently just because of who we are.
And what we must do now more than ever is... Find our face and be strong.
No, we must blend in and change our values as much as possible.
We will change everything about who we are to fit in.
We must always be cheerful.
We will never stick out.
We, from today, have no culture.
When people see our family, they won't think Arab.
They will think they are happy.
They are perfect.
We are number one happy family USA.
Remy Youssef, welcome to Fresh Air.
It's such a pleasure to have you back on the show.
That scene is so funny.
I love it when the father says, from now on, we have no culture.
It's really great to be back after many years.
I really appreciate it.
I'll be able to fit in.
And I think that's the idea that I'm obsessed with.
There's obviously all the conversations about overt racism Islamophobia, all these things on the outside.
The parts that I always tend to hone in on is well, what is the person doing to themselves amidst all that pressure?
What were the discussions like in your family living in New Jersey after 9-11?
Were there conversations in your family about whether to stand up and defend diversity and defend Islam or whether to, just like you said, erase part of themselves?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it was exactly hit the erase button, but it really was.
OK, you know, because it's such a sad, terrible thing.
And we're just near, you know, the site of death of so many people who, you know, innocent people.
So there's that piece where you're just as sad as everyone else, but then it turns towards you and who you are.
And so you kind of go, okay, we should be quiet or something.
It's incredibly confusing.
It's incredibly disorienting.
And I think within my family, we were always proud of who we were and where we come from.
And at the same time, you kind of don't want to rock the boat.
And I think my father was very pragmatic about it all.
And I remember him kind of being like, you know, my family is really well read.
They really, you know, I grew up with books all over the house.
And my dad was just like, yeah, Japanese people went through a lot after Pearl Harbor happened.
He was already kind of saying almost there was this feeling of this might be our turn right now.
And, you know, that was at the time.
And then now it's kind of like, so when does the turn end exactly?
What's what's going on?
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
Did you code switch a lot when you were 11 after 9-11 like the cartoon version of The Sun does?
Part of the code switching is not just the way he talks.
It's also like what he wears to try to look like all American, right?
Yeah, I mean, I grew up in New Jersey and there was this like burgeoning emo rock scene.
And I was so jealous of my friends who had the straight hair and wore the tight pants.
And I had this curly fro and I tried to hide it with a hat.
I was always wearing hats.
And you know, even in my older age it's like such a holdover from being a kid and trying to just stuff it under a hat.
But, you know...
The beauty of this series for me has been that I think everyone code switches, you know, and I think we leaned into this animated style where the family literally looks different when they're inside the house and when they're outside the house.
And I think to an extent, everybody does that, you know, and what becomes...
You know, the larger pressure cooker is that there is this performance that this family is literally doing for the FBI agent who moves in across the street.
But at that core underneath all of it, I think this is what everybody does.
And I think it's certainly what kids do.
And so in so many ways, it really feels like this quintessential just middle school experience.
But you add on to it, you know, the creation of Homeland Security.
Right.
A good reason to be paranoid.
Like you have every reason to to feel like you're sticking out.
You're not fitting in.
And maybe that means prison.
It's yeah, it's very much.
OK, is Courtney the popular girl talking about me behind my back?
And are the phones tapped?
You know, and usually people just have to deal with the Courtney part.
And now this kid has has both of them.
And that's where the series lives.
So there's briefly a grandfather in the series, and he is very sexist.
He is the man, and he has control, especially control over his wife.
He's grumpy.
He orders people around.
And at one point he says, I sacrificed everything for this family.
Most men of my generation hit.
And he's referring to hitting women.
And he says, I only yell.
I didn't even take a second wife.
So did you have a grandfather who was like that?
And if so, how did you deal with it?
Like, did you say anything?
My grandparents never lived with us.
I mean, this is trying to kind of create something that's more emblematic of that generational thing than my actual grandfather, who was quite different and was also.
You know, my grandfather is really interesting because he grew up in a village.
He was one of two people who could read.
And then he took that and became one of the only ones there again who went to college and then actually became an interpreter there.
For the United Nations, he interpreted between Arabic and French and English for over 20 years.
So he's kind of this totally different mold, I think, of that, Jen, because he was such a— Can I just stop you for a second?
Yeah.
That's amazing he was one of two people in his village who could read and became a UN translator.
It is so much more impressive.
Sometimes people will say to me oh dude, you were just like a kid in New Jersey and now you have this whole Hollywood thing.
And I go, man, in terms of arcs within my family, that's not really.
It's like, yeah, I should have.
Of course I have to look at what what came before me.
I mean, he he set the bar.
We're listening to Terry's interview with Rami Youssef.
His new series is called Number One Happy Family USA.
We'll hear more of their conversation after a break.
I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
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So you write and sing songs for the series.
And I want to play one that's, I think you can describe it as the theme song.
And it ends the first episode of number one, Happy Family USA.
So let's hear it.
And then we'll talk about writing songs.
So this is in the voice of the father.
Oh, hello, neighbors.
You're afraid of us near you.
But the only blood we want is to bleed red, white, and blue.
I know you think we're scary, but I swear to you we're fun.
We will prove to you our love.
We will be number one, number one.
So what made you think you should turn part of this into a musical?
So yeah, that song comes out of the earlier clip that you played, where he kind of proclaims out of peak anxiety to his family that they're going to erase their identity.
And then he bursts the door open and starts singing this proclamation to the neighborhood. and forces his family to come out and dance with him on the front lawn and then the song as you can kind of hear there ends with the police swarming the house a helicopter and then hussein sacrificing his son to the authorities uh you know hoping that that will appease them and you know i felt this uh It's either going to be we're making something depressing or something so insane that you have to laugh at this depressing subtext.
And so it had to be the latter.
And that's where music just started to feel like such a fun extension.
Have you ever been in a band?
In high school I was in a band and played backup guitar, backup vocals and always fiddled around with guitars.
And then I kind of had put the music thing down as I kind of went into comedy and performing and all of that.
And then...
We were doing these voices at a sound studio that had all these instruments.
And I probably picked up the guitar for the first time after many, many years and started singing these songs as the dad, and had so much fun.
And then we ended up baking it into the show.
In your band, did you do covers or originals?
It was originals.
And if you go back and listen to the originals, you'd probably encourage us to do covers.
Well, in addition to like the number one happy family song that we just heard, you write some dark songs.
And I want to play a dark song.
This is a father singing.
One of the lines he sings is sometimes the darkness comes for me.
This is his like deep internal feelings, not the facade he's trying to put on.
So let's hear that.
Do you want to say anything about it before we hear it?
This comes at the end of an episode where we've seen him probably be his most performative.
And then he has this moment when everyone's asleep and he goes out into the driveway and sits by his halal cart.
He's a halal cart vendor in the city, and it's always parked in the driveway.
And I love that image because it sticks out in this suburb that they can barely afford.
And he sits at it, starts playing guitar.
And at a certain point there's like a piano line in which he hits the area of the cart where the sodas are stored and it opens up into a keyboard.
And there's a piano that comes out of the cart.
And And so he's singing this thing.
That sounds sad, but at the same time visually is, I think, quite funny.
And it's the kind of thing you can only do in animation.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay, let's hear it.
I think I'm scared, But I'm sitting with my family.
Got to show them that I'm brave.
Sometimes I'm quiet, But I think it's just because I might scream.
I've got to be Mr Tough Guy, I'm the dad, But sometimes Oh, oh the darkness It comes for me And I don't know what to do.
Yeah, the darkness Oh, it comes for you too.
And what do you do?
I think I'm gonna fight for the light.
Yeah, I think I'm gonna fight for the light.
I think I'm gonna fight for the light.
Baby, I'm fighting the fight.
Do I detect a very slight Lou Reed influence in that?
Somebody called it Kebab Dylan.
Somebody else was like, wait, dude, this is like War on Drugs.
This is like some sort of like Arab Jeff Buckley thing.
Yeah, it's totally this like folk thing that is so fun to do as this character because it –
It kind of sneaks up on you.
And he, again, he's so crazy the whole episode.
And then all of a sudden you go, oh, my God, this guy is so tender.
And there's this tenderness in him.
And that is the experience of so many of the men that I know where you go.
Oh man, this dude is like kind of intense.
And then you get him alone and you go, wait, is this the most emotional person on earth?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
And I want to point out again that that was my guest Rami Youssef singing on that song.
Is that your guitar also?
It is.
Good for you.
And that was an excerpt from Rami Youssef's new animated series, Number One Happy Family USA.
You started out in college studying political science and I think economics as well.
I'm not sure where that came from considering where you've ended up.
But how did you go from that to comedy?
I was very bad at school.
And so I ended up leaving.
I was always in high school really middle school and high school I was fascinated with cameras and I was always making things.
And then in the back of my head I said what I love doing the most, but there's no way I'm going to be able to actually live doing this, and I didn't see a path to it being a career because I didn't know anyone who'd ever done that.
So I just thought I had to go to school and become a lawyer, you know, because that was kind of the only thing I could imagine myself doing, even if I had no real connection to like the law.
I just said well, I know how to talk, and it seems like those guys talk and then they're able to feed their families by talking, and So that was kind of all I could see.
There's some books you got to read in the middle.
And then this comedy thing comes up and you go, oh, well, you could talk here too.
And this is way more in line with what I love about art and filmmaking.
And so, yeah, it just became inevitable at a certain point.
It seems to me the stand-up comedy world is so different than what the life of a faithful Muslim would look like.
Because I don't know what circles you traveled in, but you think of stand-up comics first of all, of just being on the road all the time and having really bad eating habits and drinking a lot.
So were there parts of your life, especially early on when you had to?
You probably had less control of your life early on when you started in stand-up.
Even things like, is it five times a day?
Yeah.
Yeah, praying five times a day as a young comic on the road.
Yeah.
How do you manage that?
Do you have to make certain compromises?
Well, this is a great thing.
There's so many great features that are built into it.
You can do traveler's prayers, or you can combine.
I mean, it's amazing.
Oh, there's traveler's prayers?
Oh, yeah.
Are there special prayers?
Oh.
You can combo.
You can combo and shorten.
But I think the thing you're talking about though, in terms of fitting it in certain places, this is where I actually think an artistic lifestyle is so interesting, because so my father, you know, worked managing hotels, always on his feet, always dealing with people hey, where do I pray?
Like the broom closet?
You know there's that and it's just like where is that going to happen?
And then, you know, when you're an artist, it's like everyone assumes you're going to be 20 minutes late.
You know there's this whole other you know kind of way, and I always think, you know, I'm surrounded by spiritual people.
You know whether they are, you know, part of any sort of practicing thing or not.
Because Hollywood is basically hey, I have this 130-page, you know thing, and I know you don't see it yet, but I see it.
I believe in the unseen of these words on this page.
Come with me and let's all believe in it together and make it, right?
It's such a spiritual place.
You know, everyone is tapping into, you know, the unseen.
Do you have prayer breaks for everybody who wants it on your sets?
We do.
Yeah, it's on our call sheet.
Rami Youssef, it's really been such a pleasure to have you back on the show.
Thank you so much.
Oh, thank you for the, you know, just incredibly thoughtful questions.
It's always just so exciting.
So I thank you, Terry.
That was Terry Gross speaking with Rami Youssef.
His new animated series is called Number One Happy Family USA.
It's now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Well, up next is my conversation with Danny McBride.
His latest show, The Righteous Gemstones, just finished its fourth and final season.
It's a dark comedy about a rich Southern family of televangelists who talk about salvation on TV.
But behind the scenes, it's all dysfunction, greed, scandal. and sometimes even crime.
We watch throughout the show's run the most ridiculous antics a mass baptism and a wave pool gone wrong, a full frontal parking lot fight scene and the gospel banger misbehavin'.
At the center of the Gemstone family is Eli Gemstone, played by John Goodman, and his three deeply flawed adult children, who are constantly caught up in rivalries and schemes to keep their religious empire intact.
In this scene I'm about to play, the three siblings played by McBride Edie, Patterson and Adam Devine, are trying to convince their dad Eli, who is retired as the head preacher, to come back to the church for a fundraising event to honor their late mom.
Goodman's character Eli, who speaks first in this clip, has left town on a boat to escape the church and the family.
What can I do for you kids?
Ain't nobody heard whether you were coming back for Mama's birthday celebration telethon.
Just curious if maybe your RSVP is floating around some bottle out here.
Yeah, well, I'm not going to make it.
What?
Why come?
It's for Mama, Daddy.
Yeah, that's your dead wife, remember, dude?
Of course.
I just, I'm out here.
I'm trying to wrestle with things.
I'm trying to figure out what I need.
This dude's down here wasting away in Margaritaville thinking he's fucking Robinson Crusoe, like you fucking Tom Hanks from that one motion picture.
Philadelphia.
No, not the AIDS one, the by-his-self one.
No, the, uh, dang, I just had it.
The by-his-self one.
What is the fucking Tom Hanks by-his-self one?
Castaway.
Castaway.
Bingo.
That's what you're doing, Daddy.
You're out here acting like you in that goddamn motion picture.
Danny McBride has built a career, really an empire, as a writer, actor and producer with a sharp sense for the ridiculous side of masculinity and ambition.
He creates men who are loud, delusional, and hilarious, in part because they are totally unlikable.
Think Kenny Powers, the trash-talking washed-up baseball player in Eastbound and Down, or Neil Gamby, the petty, power-hungry vice principal in Vice Principals.
His films include This is the End, Tropic Thunder, and Pineapple Express.
Most of The Righteous Gemstones was filmed in and around Charleston, South Carolina, where McBride has carved out his own version of Hollywood South, with his longtime collaborators David Gordon Green and Jody Hill running their production company Rough House Pictures.
And Danny McBride, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate being on here.
Remind us of how this idea kind of came about.
I read that you initially wanted to write something about the Memphis Mafia right around the time that Elvis died.
I did.
I had an idea I was working on called The King's Dead.
That was all about sort of that summer when Elvis died.
And it was going to be a crime story about the Dixie Mafia.
And I don't know.
I was playing around with it, but I never really found the right angle into it.
But there was a lot of details and things I liked about that world and that I don't know that attitude for characters.
And so I kind of had put a pin in that for a while.
I wasn't sure what to do with that story.
And After I moved to Charleston, South Carolina, which was in 2017.
Once I got here, I'd moved from Los Angeles.
I just was seeing how many churches were around.
It just got me kind of thinking about when I was a kid, I used to go to church a lot.
I was raised in a pretty religious family.
And it just kind of got my brain thinking about what church is like now.
And so I started doing some digging around and kind of researching.
And that's when I kind of came around this idea of these megachurches and kind of like noticing how they were starting to inhabit old box retail stores here in the South.
And they were just kind of popping up everywhere.
And the more I kind of dug around on it, the more it kind of seemed like, well, maybe that –
Dixie Mafia story could unfold in a televangelist family.
Maybe we could mash those two things together.
You mentioned that your family was religious.
What did that look like?
You know, when I was a kid, we were Southern Baptists and both my parents were pretty heavily involved in the church.
And we were one of those families where they were like, every Sunday, we'd be there on Wednesdays.
My mom, she did puppet ministry at the church.
So we would help her take these puppets to church early Sunday morning.
And so we were pretty involved.
And then when I was in sixth grade, my parents got divorced.
And yeah, it was a really interesting thing because we had kind of given this church so much of our time.
And then kind of we were there and it was like my mom just sort of raising me and my sister.
And And then suddenly like, you know, the church wasn't so much of a welcoming place.
You know, there was a lot of judgmental eyes there because my mom had gotten a divorce.
And it just I remember it being a very eye-opening experience for me about some of the people that went to that church and about that level of acceptance and kind of I don't know.
It might've been honestly, where the initial spark of just like wow, everyone's here to, you know, learn about one thing.
But it's interesting how everyone here doesn't necessarily, you know, take that and behave that way.
When you were helping your mom with her puppet shows, were you working on ideas too?
I'm thinking about you as a young storyteller.
You know, I was just inspired by her.
I remember when she first started doing it, she got like a typewriter.
And I remember like watching her write these sort of like two or three page you know little plays that they would end up doing on Sunday.
And I never helped with them or wrote on them, but I remember like watching her do it.
And then I got to like I would hear them and then I would see what was performed and I just always kind of admired it.
I thought it was cool that she was doing that.
So I just think that from seeing my mom be a storyteller at such a young age, I think it definitely kind of made an impact on me as far as, like you know that that's something people can do, that you can craft a story and use it to kind of connect with people.
You know, one of the things about the series I find remarkable is –
It skews this world of big-time preachers and televangelists, but it never feels like it's mocking the sincerity of their faith.
I'm just wondering, how did you find the balance between, I guess I would say, satire and respect?
Did you ever go too far in your writing and then think, okay, I got to pull this back a little bit?
We're always self-censoring, I guess.
We'll always do it first, and then we'll decide as it goes on what's too far and what's not enough.
But it was interesting.
When I started this and I met with the other writers, that was something – as I was watching other comedies that are set in the world of religion, that was one thing I kind of noticed with all of them is that there was a level of disrespect there towards just people believing in something.
Yeah.
I don't know.
That stuff didn't resonate for me, and I felt like I wasn't in on the joke.
The joke felt a little bit like – I don't know, biting, pessimistic.
It's easy for someone who doesn't believe in something to just be like ha-ha.
Look at all these idiots.
And that to me just didn't seem like what I wanted to spend my time doing.
And so –
From the get-go, that was sort of what I told the writers.
I'm like, listen, I don't ever want any of the jokes to really be about religion.
I don't want them to be about someone's faith.
We're setting these characters in here who are hypocrites, and let's make them the butt of the joke.
And from that we might be able to actually explore something even greater and even open the door to more people coming into the show than maybe would normally be.
Our guest is Danny McBride, creator and star of The Righteous Gemstones.
We'll be right back after a short break.
I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
Support for this podcast and the following message come from Fisher Investments.
SVP Judy Abrams explains the importance of education and resources when it comes to planning to, and through, retirement.
It's interesting.
People put money into their retirement accounts for years, but they have no idea what's supposed to happen when they have to start taking money out.
When I'm speaking to a prospective client for the first time, one of the ways that I work to establish trust is to listen to them.
Is there anything we should know about their spouse or their children, or plans to move or their health?
Our job is to get the full picture.
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It's far more comprehensive than just managing the money.
When clients realize that we have the resources and the competence to be able to handle a wide array of financial questions, they know they're in good hands.
My guest today is Danny McBride actor, writer and the creative mind behind HBO's The Righteous Gemstones.
He's also known for his breakout role as Kenny Powers in Eastbound and Down and the unhinged school administrator in Vice Principals.
The Righteous Gemstones, which just completed its fourth and final season, is a satirical comedy about a dysfunctional Southern televangelist family.
I got to play a clip to give people kind of a grounding of this.
The thing about the Gemstone kids is that I don't think anybody ever really talks the way they do and yet they kind of feel really believable.
So this clip I'm about to play is from season two, and it's the three siblings, you, your sister, played by Edie Patterson, and your brother, played by Adam Devine, and you all are standing by. this statue of your late mother.
And you've got this announcement to make that soon you will be the head of the church.
And of course, the three of you start fighting.
Your character speaks first.
Let's listen.
Except my dominance or don't, doesn't matter to me.
The damn tides of time and the winds of dust are upon us.
My reign is nigh.
What did you even just say, man?
That made no sense to me.
That sounded foreign.
That's not a phrase, dummy.
Oh, my.
You're just both a bunch of two-bit, half-rate siblings.
Damn Frank Stallone and Stephen Baldwin over here.
I'm Stephen Baldwin?
Yes, you are.
Oh.
No, you did not.
I ain't got no time for this.
Bye, Felicia.
Okay, no.
What did he just say?
No.
Did he just say bye, Felicia to me?
Yeah, what does that mean?
Bye, Felicia.
Jesse, you will never run this family.
So bye, Felicia to you, Jesse.
Who's Felicia?
You are.
No, you're Felicia.
Let's just all act like adults.
You're Felicia.
We can act like adults if he's Felicia because I'm not Felicia.
That was the scene from season two of The Righteous Gemstones.
And my guest today is creator and star of the show, Danny McBride.
Okay, first off, Danny, take me inside your brain.
What do you know about Bye, Felicia?
Are you ready for this now?
Oh, God.
I mean, you know, I have, like I said, I have young kids.
They are constantly on YouTube.
They're constantly showing me just silly stuff.
And so all of it ends up just bleeding into my head somewhere or another.
And the Gemstone siblings are just like so stunted that it just seems like they just communicate in broken English mixed in with tons of pop culture.
Yeah.
One of the through lines.
In addition to like trying to inherit an empire, the thing that you do in The Righteous Gemstones is all of the children absolutely adore and worship the memory of their mama.
And that love feels so authentic.
The mother wound they obviously have by her loss.
It almost feels like it's what makes them good and redeemable.
It feels like they also really do love the Lord, despite the fact that they're obviously messed up.
Yeah, I mean I think that with that I mean as we started.
You know, it's interesting like when I first started writing the show, the very first attempt I had on the pilot was it was I was a minister and Edie actually I had written her to be my wife and we were in a small church and I was being blackmailed by a bigger church that wanted to move in on us.
And it was kind of, it was going to kind of be about us going up against that bigger church.
And I just was real, I was struggling.
I wrote that script and there was something about him.
Like, it just doesn't, I don't know where this goes.
And I don't, I'm not really identifying with who this minister is.
And there just wasn't enough there for me to kind of put my hooks into.
And then, as I started like really looking at the story, I was kind of like you know who's interesting are the people that would blackmail a small time minister to take his church?
And so then it was sort of like a light went off and it was like that's who this is about, you know?
And You know a lot of people don't have experience with running a megachurch or can identify with that.
So for me it suddenly became like it's about a family and it's a family who's suffered loss, because I think that's something that people can identify with.
And I think when you find those things that are relatable, then if you can hit those things earnestly, I think you can then put those characters in any world and people will take the ride.
Have any church families or people just in general reached out to you and said, this is us?
Nobody has been that specific, but I did talk to different pastors when I was doing the show.
Before I did the show.
I don't know if they would have talked to me after I was doing the show, but there were people who definitely opened their doors to me, and let me just pick their brains and ask questions about how a church is run and about the minutia of it.
Yeah.
There was one minister that I talked to and he was very open about just how it was run and how things worked.
He's like, nobody knows I've seen it, but you nailed it.
That's what he said.
Oh my gosh.
And when I saw him, my heart dropped.
So I'm like, oh God, what's he gonna say?
Right, you're trying to avoid him.
I was thrilled.
What percentage of the show is kind of ad-libbed?
You know, out of all the shows we've done, we definitely did a lot of improv at Eastbound and a lot in VPs.
This show actually has the least amount of improv we probably have done of all of our shows, just because there's so many spinning plates with all the different characters and everything that we always kind of just end up being up against the clock to pull it all off.
So...
Most of it is probably scripted more than anything we've done before.
But we kind of also allow ourselves that if somebody has an idea on the day, we're not precious about anything.
And so scenes like at church lunch, when you have all those characters sitting around there, we would rip on those things for sure.
Like everybody would just kind of riff.
And those are the scenes where you have the entire cast there.
So it'd be kind of foolish to film and not let someone say something if they want to.
Can you recall a scene?
Oh, let's see.
The church lunches, they happen a lot in a lot of the seasons.
And so the schedule on Gemstones is very aggressive.
You know, a lot of times we have like two and three location moves during the course of the day.
But church lunch because there's so many characters and it's on a set.
It's like those were the days we have the most control.
So you would usually have a full day to shoot those scenes.
And yeah, you know that just allowed for everybody, I think A to kind of like take a breath and just like you know hey, we're all here just to have fun and there's not some ticking clock to be worked against.
And you would just go around the table and you know, Edie throws in something, and then on the next take Adam throws in something, and you know it just turns into all this chaos.
I mean, I think in the second season, I think it's like in the first episode maybe we're sitting around that church lunch and we're talking about how Judy and BJ got married at Disney World.
And then we start like railing on her about like, were any of the legacy characters present?
All of that stuff was all just improv.
And it was so fun just to kind of sit there and Edie's got to be – she's got to be disgusted by us and we're poking holes in her wedding.
And so everyone's just throwing in all of their Disney knowledge and acting like they're Disney pros.
But that was just how every day with all those characters were.
We would just have fun and try to ultimately make each other laugh.
Let's listen to that scene, which was in the second season.
Disney World was a thing.
It was BJ's dream wedding destination.
So we did it Nike style, dog.
We just did it.
Okay?
That's how we roll.
We're seat of our pants.
We're fun kids.
We're whim babies.
So...
We meant no disrespect, Daddy.
Oh, Daddy.
I just want to know who officiated the wedding.
Was it Donald or was it Goofy?
Oh, slice.
That was a good one.
It was Prince Eric, for your information.
Thank you.
Prince Eric?
Who the is that?
The boy from Little Mermaid.
The hottest guy in the entire Disney catalog?
It's Ariel's boyfriend, you .
Oh, Lord.
Y'all went down to Disney World, didn't invite any family to come to your wedding and you didn't even get a legacy character to marry you.
What legacy character are we supposed to go for that's better than Prince Eric?
Oh, I don't know.
How about Mickey Mouse?
Man, f***ing Mickey.
Enough!
Judy, I don't want to discuss the mermaid wedding.
That was the scene from season two of The Righteous Gemstones.
And my guest today is creator and star of the show, Danny McBride.
Did you grow up with a lot of cursing around you?
You know, I didn't, but I was – I loved cursing.
I mean, when I was – Obviously.
When I was a kid it's like two live crew and Eddie Murphy and like – I mean, I just had all this stuff.
I would record this stuff like from friends on cassette tapes.
I remember like Eddie Murphy's – delirious.
I had like an audio tape of it that I had recorded off of like a friend's like VHS or something and I would just put it in my Walkman.
And I can remember like driving to church with my parents in the back seat and they're like what are you listening to?
I'm like nothing nothing, you know.
I would just be like just listening to Eddie Murphy or listening to live crew.
I mean it just always tickled me.
I just always thought it was so funny.
Just someone speaking with such vulgar it just I don't know, I think it ruined me, it tainted me.
Well, it definitely is infused in your shows.
How do you navigate like the children on set and stuff when there's all that cursing?
Which I should say it's gratuitous, but it also like really works.
I just always have to watch your shows when my kids are out of the room, you know?
Yes, 100%.
Well, you know what we try to do with.
It is that like – even that language part of it is like.
It's an extension of these, of like the character development, in a strange way.
It's like that sometimes that language is used because they don't have the facilities to sort of express what they want to say.
And so relying on, just like, some bombastic way of communicating ends up being, you know, part of the fabric of who they are.
You know that it kind of represents some sort of like stunted ability to communicate, and And so when we start looking at some of the cursing that way, I don't know, then it becomes like a weird sort of game of character development where it might on the surface just appear like they're dropping F-bombs, but then there's actually thought behind why they're dropping the F-bomb there.
Yeah.
Okay, something I really wanted to know.
Your character Jesse, in the Gemstones, and if we go way back to Kenny in Eastbound and Down, they both have like swagger.
You know, like the way that you walk, you kind of have this like gangster lean.
And since you like brought up two live crew, I'm bringing this up.
Is that how you move or is that part of the characters you play?
I think it's a little bit part of the characters.
I mean, I might have a little swagger in my life.
I won't totally diminish my swagger.
But you know, it's also just like I – you know, growing up George Jefferson.
He honestly is like one of my favorite characters when I was a kid.
Like I just thought he was so funny and how mean he was and funny he was and that little bit of a swagger he had, that – I don't know.
It's just always something that sort of tickled me.
And so –
Jesse, I definitely infuse that with.
Jesse, for whatever reason, is always standing like he's about to bow up and fight someone.
His fists are clenched and he's squeezing his cheeks together and just walking with a strut.
But that's how I would just get into character.
That was it.
Now that I'm thinking about it, even that clip I play where you're like bye Felicia, as you're walking away.
That is the George Jefferson walk 100.
It totally is.
Yeah.
There's something in all of your characters.
You know, you present as a really nice guy, but there's something in all of your characters.
They're all kind of terrible.
And I'm just wondering what interests you about these types of people, the Kinnies of the world the, you know Jessies of the world, you know.
You know what I think it is?
I think it's trying to find the perfect clown for some of this comedy.
I think if a character is too goofy, I don't identify with them as much.
Or like that comedy doesn't like speak to me as much.
And so then it's sort of like finding, like how do you center a comedy around a clown?
But it's not just pratfalls or just like goofy behavior.
And so to me, character deficiency starts to be what seems like something fun to play around with.
These are such exaggerated – uh enlarged like versions of people around us you know that i don't know there's something about it that it's like by making fun of somebody who doesn't know how to express themselves or just wears their emotions on their sleeve to such an obnoxious level there's something there that as you make fun of them you can also kind of like poke at the truths of that of like why somebody would behave that way and what that ultimately probably means and so I don't think it's like trying to create a defense for jerks, but it is just a way of, I guess, exploring jerks in a way that is comical and maybe a little enlightening.
David Green and Jody Hill, you guys have been longtime partners for a really long time.
When did you guys know that you all had something special?
Oh, I can't, you know, I don't really know.
I mean, it's like you know, we all met at the North Carolina School of the Arts and we're it was in Winston-Salem and it's just this kind of tiny film school at the time.
And it was not in the cards for me to go somewhere like NYU or USC.
And this was like in 1995 is when I was a freshman at school there.
And so I was really just trying to like calling around trying to find a film school that I could A afford and I could hopefully get into.
And film schools at that point – Is that what you mean when you say it was not in the cards for you?
Do you mean because of the cost or – Yeah, there was just no way that – yeah.
There wasn't just – there wasn't a world where I would have been able to have – afforded those loans or been able to get them out.
And I actually had a friend who had gone to NYU that lived in my neighborhood.
And he graduated right as I was applying for schools.
And I remember that he had asked a lot of people for money.
And then he was disgruntled when he graduated from school and now had a ton of debt and wasn't sure what he was going to do next.
And so The whole thing seemed daunting and kind of scary to me.
So I needed to find something that I could afford.
And so School of the Arts was a state school in North Carolina.
And their film program was brand new.
I think we were the third class that graduated from there.
And what I really liked about that school was that When you made a movie there, you weren't allowed to spend your own money.
You weren't allowed to go raise money outside of what the budget was.
They gave you what the budget was, and that was part of the education.
It was like, how do you make it work with what you're given?
And I felt like what was nice about that is it seemed like it put – all the filmmakers on the same playing field.
It wasn't like the rich kids were going to have the best movies.
Like everyone was, was given like a number, and this is what everyone needed to kind of like create their vision with.
And it was awesome.
And I think to pull that off you really had to rely on the other people that were at school with you, and your friends and your collaborators.
And I think that's what sort of started.
Jody and you know, David and John Kachuri and Jeff Bradley these other guys I work with that are still involved with the show.
I don't know.
It just made us always want to kind of rely on each other more than rely on the system.
You know I read that – is it true that Kanye West approached you and asked you to play him in a biopic?
Yeah.
He did.
It took me a while to believe that that was Kanye West when he called me.
My phone rang and he said, this is Kanye West.
It was just like, get out of town.
No, it's not.
Who is this?
Yeah, it was a few years ago.
He reached out and I guess he was a fan of some of the work I had done and He said he wanted to come to meet me in Charleston, South Carolina, to talk about a project.
And he came down here and we hung out for this awesome day and went out in a boat and talked about life.
And he was telling me he was interested in doing a story about his life and wanted me to play him.
And it was just sort of like shocking and kind of like – it's like I'm flattered, but I don't understand how it would 100 work.
But it's like, let's talk.
Yeah.
Did he talk about what he sees in the characters you play and how you like really draw out these themes?
That really spoke to him.
He just said that there was.
I remember when we were on the phone call he said there was like a fearlessness to it all, that like we were just kind of willing to kind of go there with things.
And he felt like that's what would have been needed.
That had to be flattering though, even if it was kind of crazy, I guess.
It was very flattering.
And it was a very, like it was a day that I will definitely not forget.
You know, we hung out and just talked about life and, you know, out in the boat for a while.
And then we came back here and my son was pretty young at the time.
And we came into the house.
My son's like, do you think Kanye wants to watch me play Fortnite?
And I was like, I don't know, maybe ask him.
And then it just like for 10 minutes, Kanye and I just stood there watching my son play Fortnite.
That's love there, right?
When the kids are like, watch me.
You know, that means that you're cool.
Well, Danny McBride, I just want to thank you for all the joy that you brought me and so many others with The Righteous Gemstones.
And thank you for this conversation.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for taking the time.
It means a lot.
Danny McBride is the creator and co-star of The Righteous Gemstones.
We're going to sing and we're going to dance.
Mama told me not to.
I did anyway.
Misbehaving.
Daddy said don't, but I said I'm gonna misbehave.
I'm on a windowsill swimming in a creek.
Catching crawdads and playing with a stick.
I wore lipstick.
And I got caught shaving.
Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.
Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.
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