Joseph Stephens: Last News

A.D. Amorosi Beyond the misdeeds and greed of the beloved televangelist family featured on HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones,” one of the most marked elements of its co-creators’ rude, enlightened and hilarious series is its music.As with every other series creator-writer-actor Danny McBride has co-concocted — including 2009’s “Eastbound & Down” and 2016’s “Vice Principals” — the unique musical tone of “The Righteous Gemstones” comes down to the longtime friendship of college buddies McBride, composer Joseph Stephens and music supervisor Devoe Yates.Where the musical mix of “Gemstones” is concerned, theirs is a genuinely fresh blend of new or rare sacred songs intimately tied to an equally bracing, secular Southern-fried brand of rock, blues, country and soul, to say nothing of its hot and holy original music and nuanced arrangements.

The cast and crew of HBO's The Righteous Gemstones were on the second day of shooting season two in March when the novel coronavirus came to Charleston, S.C. — or, as creator-star Danny McBride characterized it, "Everything got real, real quick." So production on the comedy, about a family of televangelists who seem to misplace their WWJD bracelets for weeks or even years at a time, shut down, uncertain when it would be able to resume.

The Righteous Gemstones, Danny McBride's comedy about a megachurch televangelist and his progeny in whom "the works of the flesh are evident," was a modest hit for HBO when it debuted in August. But it achieved viral glory after its fifth episode, titled "Interlude," which featured the original song "Misbehavin'." The flashback episode, set in 1989, centers on a planned reunion tour between family matriarch Aimee-Leigh (played by Jennifer Nettles, the Grammy-winning lead vocalist of the country duo Sugarland) and her brother, "Baby" Billy Freeman (Walton Goggins).