Danny McBride

Danny McBride is a main actor and the show creator of the T.V. series, ***The Righteous Gemstones***.

## Background

Daniel Richard McBride was born on December 29, 1976. He is an American actor, comedian, and writer. He starred in the HBO television series Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals, and The Righteous Gemstones (T.V. Series), the first two of which he co-created with frequent collaborator Jody Hill.

McBride was born in Statesboro, Georgia. He grew up in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. He attended University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he was roommates with collaborator Jody Hill and Eastbound & Down co-star, Ben Best. McBride, Hill, and Best also attended alongside director David Gordon Green, another frequent collaborator. Green and McBride worked together on Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and the Halloween film series reboot.

McBride's first major film appearance was The Foot Fist Way, a low-budget comedy written about a taekwondo instructor from Concord, NC outside Charlotte. Foot Fist Way was directed by Hill and written by Hill, McBride, and Best, with McBride debuting a character very similar in attitude and demeanor to Kenny Powers. Foot Fist Way was eventually produced by Gary Sanchez Productions, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell's production house, who later produced Eastbound & Down.

Eastbound & Down would be produced in 2009, featuring Best, Hill, and McBride in both their acting cast and their writers' room. Gary Sanchez Productions would eventually bring Will Ferrell and Craig Robinson into the cast, cementing it as a comedy hit when debuting. Kenny Powers, the protagonist of the series played by McBride, shares quite a few characteristics with Jesse Gemstone, namely a penchant for shenanigans, crude behavior, coarse language, and creating awkward situations.

Eastbound would be a massive hit, resulting in McBride appearing in other films such as Your Highness, This Is The End, and the Alien: Covenant series. The same crew behind Eastbound would also create the two-season series, Vice Principals.

Vice Principals, created in 2016, would lay a foundation that would later become Righteous Gemstones. McBride plays a character again sharing similarities with Jesse Gemstone and Kenny Powers in North Jackson High School vice principal, Neal Gamby. It was through this series that McBride would share the screen with Walton Goggins and Edi Patterson, both of which would join McBride later in Gemstones. It is still debated whether or not Vice Principals and Righteous Gemstones are part of the same universe, as North Jackson High would also appear in Gemstones as the high school Gemstone churchgoer Dot Nancy was attending during Season 1.

Vice Principals was intended to be a two-season series from the beginning, but it would be influential in how McBride would go on to create Gemstones. McBride actually moved himself and his family from Los Angeles to Charleston circa 2017, following the conclusion of Vice Principals' filming. McBride, Hill, and Best eventually formed their own production company, Rough House, who now does the bulk of their work in South Carolina. The Carolinas are consistently the setting for McBride's work, with most of Eastbound being set in cities across both states (Shelby, NC but filmed in Wilmington; Myrtle Beach, SC; and Charlotte, NC) and the time in Myrtle Beach spent filming season 3 of Eastbound motivated McBride to set VP's in Charleston. Righteous Gemstones also references cities/towns throughout the Carolinas, with Winston-Salem (where McBride and Hill attended UNCSA) being where BJ and Judy confront Baby Billy in Season 2 and Freeman's Gap being located somewhere in the Upstate SC mountains, as Pumpkintown in Pickens County is seen when the family are traveling through there.

McBride has appeared in other works, such as K Swiss commercials while in character as Kenny Powers, and he has also appeared as a voice actor in the Angry Birds films, as well as Grand Theft Auto V as the voice of Blaine County radio host, Duane Earl.

McBride has been married to his wife Gia since 2010 and has two children. He now lives in Charleston, close to where the Gemstones series is filmed.