The first family of televangelism brings it all home in the fourth and final season of The Righteous Gemstones
Those who worship the Family Gemstone will be happy to hear the good news: they are back at the pulpit again. Donning their best, sparkliest apparel — and, from the looks of the trailer, some feathered angel wings to boot! — the snazzy, southern televangelists return for one final instalment of their HBO comedy series.
A dark, religion-centred comedy, The Righteous Gemstones was conceived by Danny McBride and his industry friends when they moved back to Charleston, South Carolina, in 2017. An American actor and filmmaker best known for the baseball comedy series Eastbound & Down, the so-called “stoner comedy” Your Highness and, most recently, for contributing to John Carpenter’s Halloween franchise as a writer, McBride was born and raised in the South. And although televangelists existed in his periphery as a child, the multi-talented actor says the intricacies and illegalities surrounding much of that world only became apparent to him in adulthood.
“I grew up going to church every Sunday, so I’d been to church for years and years of my life,” McBride told CNN. “I know the Bible, I know all the apostles and I know all the stories, and it was a big part of my childhood growing up . . . And when I moved back to Charleston, I saw all the churches here and it just really kind of got me thinking about church again.”
The series follows the Gemstones, a family who has gained wealth, status and (possible) salvation by way of their world-famous megachurch. Dedicating their lives to swindling, scamming and preaching the Lord’s word in all manner of ridiculous ways, the Gemstones are quite contrarian in their approach: greedy but charitable, cutthroat but kindhearted.
At the head of the Gemstone family dynasty is Dr. Eli Gemstone, played by Emmy-winning actor John Goodman. The founding father and former head pastor of Gemstone Ministries, Eli is expected to spend much of the series’ fourth and final season aboard his boat as he tries to find the best way forward following the events of season three.
“We meet [Eli] in a much, much different place than we’ve ever seen him in seasons past,” McBride told GQ. “He’s definitely going through some things in his life and trying to figure out how to take the next steps into whatever lays ahead for him, but because he’s a Gemstone and because his kids are psychopaths, that will not be as easy as it should be.”
Speaking of his psychopath children, Jesse, Kelvin and Judy are played by McBride, Workaholics alum Adam DeVine and Edi Patterson, who co-starred with McBride in his earlier HBO comedy, Vice Principals. While Jesse, the eldest of Eli’s adult children, has taken on the bulk of the pastoral duties at Gemstones Ministries, his temper and foul mouth have yet to be impacted by his preaching.
Kelvin and Judy, meanwhile, often play second fiddle to Jesse’s brash and boisterous personality. Whereas Kelvin’s inability to be taken seriously is largely due to his being the baby of the family, his liberal sexuality also works to ostracize him from his conservatively minded kin. Judy is also often overlooked as she is the immediate family’s only female, but her inadvertent camouflage may also be a side effect of middle child syndrome.
Also returning is Walton Goggins as Uncle Baby Billy Freeman, Eli’s sleazy brother-in-law, who is launching his own TV venture called TeenJus, a young adult TV show about a teenaged Jesus.
While fans of the show will certainly be sad to see it go, McBride felt that series had run its course. “The Lord spoke to me and said it’s time to wrap this sucker up,” he told Variety. “The story this season made the themes, ideas, and characters in The Righteous Gemstones feel whole and complete. I have loved every second of working with this team for the past eight years, and there are some incredible payoffs, twists, and turns in store over the course of this wild final season,” McBride shared.
Speaking with GQ, McBride added: “We take some massive swings this season with some stuff I don’t think the audience is going to see coming, and I’m very excited to see how it plays.”
The season premiere of The Righteous Gemstones airs on Sunday, March 9, on HBO Canada