The final season of HBO‘s The Righteous Gemstones is here.
As fans bid farewell to the Gemstone family in the fourth and final season of the Max series, the creators and cast spoke with Blavity’s Shadow and Act about what it means to kiss the show goodbye.
“I think every project you take on — if you’re choosing the right projects — does shape you,” Danny McBride, the creator, executive producer and the actor responsible for breathing life into Jesse Gemstone, said. “Because hopefully, what you’re choosing are things that challenge you and maybe something you haven’t done before. I think with this season, in this show in general, we’re constantly trying to bite off themes or bite off stories or put ourselves in positions and situations that maybe we haven’t done before. Like, looking for that growth and looking for that challenge to keep it exciting and keep it interesting. It’s a very difficult thing to do it all. To be behind and in front, I mean, each of those jobs is a full-time job on their own. You’re constantly just trying to give each of those positions the attention that’s needed to pull it off. You just kind of learn as you go along. But, I think the trick is just starting with material that is going to be constantly demanding that you push yourself and make yourself uncomfortable.”
“And I’ll make him uncomfortable for a second,” Cassidy Freeman, who stars opposite McBride as his character’s wife Amber Gemstone, said. “There’s very few people that can do what Danny does. There’s not a lot of people that can hold all of that in their head at one time and show up and be real in the moment in front of a camera. It’s really incredible. And he’s an outstanding director too.”
Exploring the evolution of the marriage between Judy Gemstone and BJ Barnes
The relationship between Judy Gemstone (Edi Patterson) and BJ Barnes (Tim Baltz) has been a roller coaster (to say the least) throughout the series. Will it finally come to a halt now that the show has reached its final installment?
“I always think of Judy and BJ as being the real deal and very in it to win it,” Patterson said. “Like, they’re supposed to be together and truly love each other. I think Judy just messes up sometimes, and I think she’s stunted, and I think that’s all that affair (from Season 3) was. When she says, ‘That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re a rock star, you know, like, somebody wants to suck my d**k, OK,’ I think it’s all about what she thinks of as the idea of things, and it’s pretty childish. Sometimes she’s got to learn lessons that someone else might have learned way sooner. But I think her love of BJ is real, and I think she just keeps learning with him because he’s smart and kind.”
Baltz added, “I think it was an opportunity for us to show what true commitment looks like, despite all the kind of turbulence and turmoil of their lives and everything that’s happening to the family. And all the discussions that we had early on were like they’re true blue, they’re really in love with each other, they’re really committed to each other. And no matter what happens and how that’s tested, they’re going to come out stronger on the other side. We always approached it in that way.”
Chemistry beyond the pages of the script
As both a family on screen and off, the cast of The Righteous Gemstones portrays a level of chemistry that cannot be found in a script. One clear example of this is the friendship between the characters Kelvin Gemstone (Adam Devine) and Keefe Chambers (Tony Cavalero).
“Tony and I are just good pals,” Devine said. “So we, you know, befriended each other. We knew that our characters were going to be close throughout the series, and luckily, we just ended up becoming really good friends.”
“I mean, very cut from the same cloth,” Cavalero said. “I think Adam knows this, but there were many years where I would go into audition rooms and they’d be like, ‘You remind me a lot of Adam Devine.’ … We’re just so very lucky. It’s so special and it, like, evolved for us. When we started this show we didn’t know what was going to happen. What I’ll miss the most is just being in such close proximity to my good buddy Adam, and being able to hang and work out and chitchat. That was so fun.”
The Righteous Gemstones’ final season premiered on HBO on March 9. New episodes will drop each Sunday until the series finale airs on May 4.
