How Danny McBride Cast [SPOILER] in an Epic Civil War Battle for ‘The Righteous Gemstones’ Season 4 Premiere: ‘My Pie-in-the-Sky Pick’

variety.com:

Alison Herman TV Critic SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the Season 4 premiere of “The Righteous Gemstones,” now streaming on Max.

For the final season premiere of “The Righteous Gemstones,” the HBO comedy that chronicles a fictional family of megachurch pastors in South Carolina, creator and star Danny McBride knew he had to nail the casting. “Gemstones” had done episode-length flashbacks before, but always with younger versions of characters we already know, like patriarch Eli (John Goodman) or siblings Jesse (McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson) and Kelvin (Adam Devine).

Season 4, by contrast, begins over 150 years in the past and stays there for nearly 40 minutes. “I knew it was going to be a tall order,” McBride told Variety at the season premiere event earlier this week. “Fans have waited over a year for the new season, and it was tricky to write an episode where none of the cast is in the show.” (McBride co-wrote the episode with fellow executive producers John Carcieri and Jeff Fradley.) To play Elijah Gemstone, a ne’er-do-well who gets swept up in the Civil War and inaugurates the family tradition of religious hypocrisy, the “Gemstones” team needed a guest star whose magnetism would more than compensate for the lack of typical family antics. “My pie-in-the-sky pick would be someone like Bradley Cooper,” McBride said.

Having broken out as the star of “The Hangover” franchise, Cooper is no stranger to lewd, outrageous comedy. But he’s also pivoted to prestige projects in recent years, directing himself in the Oscar-nominated films “Maestro” and “A Star Is Born” — and until McBride sent Cooper the script for the episode, titled “Prelude,” the actor had never previously watched the show.