[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones.]From creator Danny McBride, the third season of the HBO series The Righteous Gemstones sees Jesse (McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson) and Kelvin (Adam Devine) taking the reins of the Gemstone family televangelist empire and further solidifying their legacy, now that their father Eli (John Goodman) is easing into retirement. Now that they’re in charge, they’re going to have to overcome their differences and their own greed, in order to keep everyone else, including some long-lost cousins with questionable motives, out of their business.
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During this interview with Collider, co-stars McBride and Cassidy Freeman (who plays Amber, Jesse’s devoted wife, loyal to preserving the Gemstone legacy) talked about the broad canvas having so many characters allows them to play with, Amber’s purpose in the Gemstone family, the Amber and Judy dynamic, how the shoe-throwing moment came about, Amber’s desire to avoid scandal, how they approach wrapping up each season, and that they’d like to keep doing more seasons.

Collider: This is such a fun and crazy season. Danny, somehow you manage to make each season more epic, just in different ways. Do you guys get together, at the start of working on each season, and talk about how to approach that? Is it challenging to top yourself, each time around, or does the insanity come naturally?

DANNY McBRIDE: You have to architect it a little bit. The trick, every season, especially the way we approach it, is that we want each season to be able to stand on its own, in a way. You’re making sequels, so it really does become tricky to figure out how you make a sequel without just relying on all the same gags and all the same elements that you’ve done previously. Luckily, with this show, there’s such a broad canvas with so many characters and so much history of this family that it allows lots of areas to explore and to make unique to each individual season. What we try to start with is, what is the unique storyline that’s gonna be compelling that will only exist in this season, to give each season its own distinct feel and flavor.

Image via HBO

At what point did a Bible game show come into the conversation? That needs to air in primetime now.

McBRIDE: Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers is just a silly idea that was there from the very beginning of the season. I feel like it should be a show. I would like to see a show, just about Baby Billy hosting that show. Make it like Larry Sanders, where it’s just a curmudgeon hosting a show. I think that would be awesome.

Cassidy, Amber seems to have found her purpose this season. Does she feel that way? Why is this the path that she’s chosen for herself?

CASSIDY FREEMAN: I think she feels like her abilities are endless. She feels like she could be the head of everything, in her own heart of hearts. But I think she knows her role in this family and she’s eager to be the support. She wants to see Jesse succeed. She wants to be the head of the church with him. And she wants to also help people, genuinely. Originally, she had always wanted to just be a good wife, be a good partner, show up, and be a good mom. And now, she’s getting a taste of what it feels like to help other people and to be important in the world. It’ll be interesting to see, in the future, how far that that goes for her.

I love that we get some of the history between her and Judy, when they were both younger. What did that history teach you about their relationship now? When it comes to those backstory moments, do they ever line up with what you thought about the characters?

FREEMAN: Yeah. I try not to make it too specific and allow those old moments to create themselves. What it does is that it gives it a lot of depth. Whereas you might just have these two women, a sister-in-law and a wife, at a church lunch table, getting snarky with each other, it gives it a lot of history and it makes it almost cellular. And you don’t realize how young Jesse and Amber were when they met each other, and how long this dynamic has been going on. I think it helps inform it, for sure.

Image via HBO

The Righteous Gemstones has a lot of physical comedy. Danny, as someone responsible for those things making it into the show, do you think about that, when you’re writing stuff into the season? Do you think about the torture you might be putting yourself through?

McBRIDE: I do. This year, I made sure that I limited the amount of night work. That’s the only thing I don’t like doing. But falling off of cars, getting beat up, getting kidnapped, anything like that, I like it all. I’m up for being abused and humiliated, any way that we need me to be, to entertain the audience.

Were you like, “Okay, we haven’t beat me up enough yet, so I’m going to stand here and have folks throw shoes at us”? How did that happen?

McBRIDE: Shoe throwing felt very biblical to me. It felt like I could picture tat scene happening in an ancient temple with sandals.

It also seems like it might be difficult to get the aim exactly right.

McBRIDE: Oh, yeah. Edi [Patterson], Adam [Devine], and myself all took headshots and body shots with those shoes. It was pretty incredible, the special effects guys created two hundred pairs of rubber shoes. But even the extras who came to participate in that scene, they had no idea what the hell they would be doing when they showed up to work. And then, we did the first read-through and they were all throwing shoes at people, and it was fun just to watch a room full of buttoned up adults get in there and start wailing these shoes. It was just pure chaos.

Image via HBO

Jesse is a bit of a tattle tale when it comes to Judy’s affair, and Amber passively suggests marriage counseling for her, as a result of learning about it. Is Amber trying to get under Judy’s skin, or is she just looking out for the best interests of the family? Cassidy, how do you view where that was coming from?

FREEMAN: At the end of the day, she doesn’t want a scandal. She already thinks that Judy and Kelvin are total time bombs for this family. She thinks that they’re real thirsty, and not maybe the best representation of what this church could be. The last thing she needs, even after the Season 1 scandal with Jesse, she knows how scandals affect the church and she knows that they’re on thin ice. So, at the base of it, she doesn’t want a scandal. The fact that it’s someone who has verbally abused her for many years, in front of the whole family, is just a little icing on the cake. But I do think that there’s an element of Amber that really cares about their relationship. She wants the best for them. She wants them to work it out because it’s just complicated, if they don’t. That moment when she comes to drop off the system and it’s BJ, there’s a kindness and softness. I think she really does want them to be okay, and the main reason is that she does not want a scandal. But it’s also really fun to stick it to Judy.

Danny, when we’ve spoken in the past, and when I’ve spoken to David Gordon Green and Jody Hill, you’ve all said that this show could go on indefinitely. At the same time, the end of this season feels like a place where you could leave things. Are you still hoping to do more with this series and these characters? What are the thoughts on how you want to move forward?

McBRIDE: I definitely would love to do more. For me, I feel like one of the major weaknesses about television, when it comes to comparing it to film, is that a lot of creators use soap opera plotting, where they’re constantly teasing what’s gonna happen and they just keep pushing the ball down the field, but never really give you the answers, never really give you the closure, and never really pay off the things they’re promising because they all just want you to come back for more. I think it’s definitely more interesting to watch something that feels like it could be complete, after you’ve invested six hours of your time watching something, and that feels like it was a complete ride. I get so annoyed, watching shows that end with cliffhangers and knowing that the next season won’t even come around for a year or so. I won’t even give a shit about what was happening, a year from now. That’s happened to me with a lot of shows that I’ve really liked. I watch it, and by the time it’s over, I just find myself feeling like I wasted my time because the concept or the premise or what I was watching was never paid off. And so, for me, I want every season to feel like, if you’re investing that time, you’re gonna get a complete story, but that the world’s rich enough that it could keep going on.

Image via HBO

I can’t believe that I’m saying it about this show, in particular, but the season is left on such a beautiful moment that, who would have guessed that this family would be the most well-adjusted family on HBO.

McBRIDE: Who would have guessed?!

The Righteous Gemstones airs on Sunday nights on HBO and is available to stream at Max.