The man behindThe Righteous Gemstonestalks season two, cliffhangers, and what led the Gemstones astray.
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Note: Spoilers ahead forthe season-two finale ofThe Righteous Gemstones.
Youve talked before about the formulaic nature of edgy comedy and the blurry line between comedy and drama.
Weve just always wanted to do it our own way.
Making creative decisions around that, thats another issue.
What was your initial idea for this season when you started writing?
We were two days into shooting before COVID shut us down.
It was Eli and Junior in Memphis, driving down Beale Street.
We shot that, and then the next day, we shut down.
We had been working on that script and finished the whole season, and it was totally fine.
Some of the ideas will be stuff that well end up probably putting into the third season.
But the rewrite wasnt trying to tackle themes or something because of what was happening in the world.
It was more just my inability to put my pen down.
Can you break down the writing of an episode for me?
ForEastbound, youvetalked aboutwriting one really long screenplay instead of one episode at a time.
I knowVice Principalswas conceived as a movie and then broken into two seasons of a show.
What are the mechanics behindGemstones?Writing it is very, very difficult.
So yeah, I break down the story like I would a screenplay, but over the entire season.
Youre constantly just writing, and there is no delineation of what is going to be in which episode.
Its one of those deals where we never finish a script and then turn it in and its done.
We usually have every script open up until were shooting it.
I pitched it to her to see if she liked that, and she dug it.
I love collaborating with her.
A lot of the same stuff makes us laugh.
I like trusting the comedic sensibilities of people and just making that part of the experience.
Thats what I love about making television in general.
You want everyone to come and make something that could not be made without them.
As an art form, thats whats so exciting to me about it.
We wouldnt be able to go back and remake any of it.
Thats what I like about it more than anything just the ability to work with other people and collaborate.
Gemstonesfeels like a very generous show in that way.
Its difficult to label anybody a scene-stealer because everybody is stealing scenes all the time.
I love when its not that.
Ive always gravitated toward ensemble comedies because I like picking who I think is funny, as a viewer.
I dont want to be told,This is the one person youre laughing at.
When I was a kid, I devouredThe Goonies; it was like my favorite movie of all time.
It was hard to pick a character that I liked more than others because I liked them all.
That made the movie feel layered, it made it feel fun, it made it feel rich.
So with this show, thats what I want to do as well.
I want there to be discussions about which character people like the most.
People can choose what they like the most about it.
When we madeEastbound, that whole show just centered around Kenny Powers.
I was in almost every single scene for that show except for a handful.
The Lissons meet their downfall in season finale I Will Tell of All Your Deeds.
We used a lot of cliffhangers in the season, which I feel is fair.
To get people excited to come back, thats fair.
Who knows if Ill still be invested in a year after Ive seen a bunch of other stuff.
Maybe it goes back to when we were onEastbound.
We never knew whether we were really going to get picked up again or not.
The second season emphasizes that the Gemstones do genuinely believe in their faith.
Each of the Gemstone children gets a moment of prayer when Eli is attacked.
Religion is such a personal thing.
Who am I to say what somebody should believe in, or what gets them through tough times?
It seems sort of obnoxious to think that.
If the Gemstones didnt believe, I feel like its a less interesting show.
Then theyre just conmen.
We kind of played around a little with that when we soldEastbound.
He could have chosen another path and he didnt; he fell prey to his ego.
So I feel like making the Gemstones earnest in their belief makes the story more compelling.
It makes it a little more layered.
Was Francis Ford Coppola an inspiration?Yeah, for sure.
Thats definitely a nod to one of the greatest Mafia stories told, for sure.
Ill start with the toilet baby, because its one of my favorites.
This is too fucking gross.
I do think that he wrings genuine emotion out of something so absurd as that scene.
When you see the look in his eyes, it moves me.
And that was definitely one of those big swings.
Gideon on the motorcycles, I dont know.
It felt like we could get away with it if it was rooted in that.
I just feel like Gideon is such an interesting character.
We always call them the kids, but theyre all, like, in their 40s.
Oh, Jesse, Kelvin, Judy, and Amber.
For all of the things weve pulled off, that was weirdly a total nightmare shooting that.
It was so disgusting.
There were so many father-son storylines this season.
You talked earlier about generational storytelling.
Was the question here whether children always get messed up by their parents?It was.
The Bible is probably one of the biggest father-son stories ever, the New Testament.
I think thats intrinsic to the story we were telling this season.
Its all about purpose and where you find that purpose.
Some people look to father figures.
If youre a man, traditionally youre supposed to look to your old man for guidance.
The idea of blindly doing that can lead you down a dark path.
I have two kids, a son and a daughter.
What Ive discovered or what Ive thought about might not work for them.
Can you talk about the casting of Macaulay Culkin as Harmon, and Amos as the Lisson patriarch?
We didnt cast him until probably about a month before we shot him.
It would be perfect.
We just called him up, and luckily for us, he was down.
The same for John Amos.
We were trying to play around with who should be Lyles dad, who has that gravitas.
You were getting a peek into,Oh God, whatsThe Righteous Lissons?
So much of the seriess humor just comes from how Jesse and the rest of the family say things.
How do you craft your line deliveries?
Its not always the perfect zinger, or it might be the little metaphor that doesnt totally align.
I wrote a few drafts of this, and I didnt know how to write the preacher.
He felt so boring to me, and it wasnt something that I wanted to play.
It just felt more rich to me, and the show kind of came alive.
It feels like it goes against everything they believe, but what would they have to think?
That was the rationale that started to motivate a lot of the Gemstoness choices.
I have three final questions.
Can we get you inMagic Mike 3to reunite with Channing Tatum?I could be the DJ!
And three, is there anything you’re free to share about the third season ofGemstones?
I know you mentioned youre using some elements from the initial season-two draft.
What can we look forward to?Lets start with the second one.
Yes, Im definitely interested in being inMagic Mike 3.
Weve already started writing the third season.
Weve been writing since the end of last year, so were writing that now.
And wait, what was the other question?
Do you have a favorite Ken Burns documentary?Oh, a favorite Ken Burns doc!
Ive liked a lot of his stuff.
TheCountry Musicdoc, I thought that was awesome.
I definitely dug that.
I was exposed to a lot of that.
What would Jesses favorite be?
Does Jesse watch documentaries?Jesse doesnt fuck with documentaries.
He has no interest in seeing what the truth is.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
