The Righteous Gemstones’ Tim Baltz talks fighting a naked man

The Righteous Gemstones is extraordinarily devoted to being a household present, and equally devoted to being the least family-friendly present on tv. Usually, this implies heaps of colourful cussin’ seasoned with a little bit of comedic nudity, or an ongoing plot the place the Gemstone youth ministry types a process power known as the Smut Busters to raid porn outlets and filter out their stock (making an attempt to place them out of enterprise by giving them plenty of enterprise).

Creator Danny McBride is about as severe about crafting a dick joke as Tom Cruise is at leaping out of airplanes in Mission: Impossible. To prolong the Mission: Impossible metaphor additional, the Burj Khalifa of The Righteous Gemstones season 3 is an prolonged full-frontal battle scene with a pissed-off naked man.

In the present season, The Righteous Gemstones is lastly giving BJ Barnes (Tim Baltz), the timid husband of Judy Gemstone (Edi Patterson), his time to shine. He’s asserting himself extra and relishing his new job as a tour information on the Gemstones’ megachurch campus, and making an attempt to kind out his crumbling marriage to Judy. Judy, in the meantime, is having an affair with Stephen (Stephen Schneider), a musician on her gospel music tour that she frequently makes out with.

Photo: Jake Giles Netter/HBO

According to Baltz and Patterson, that is the emotional core that The Righteous Gemstones at all times takes significantly, and the rationale why you’ll be able to construct to a brawl between BJ and a naked Stephen and have it each be humorous and resonant.

“There’s a lot of emotional turmoil for our two characters,” says Baltz. “And I think BJ has always looked at Judy and understood her flaws or imperfections and loves her despite that, and this pushes it to a point that really tests that love and that commitment, and forces both of them to look at the relationship and understand who they are, you know? And like any couple that goes through that, ask themselves in a very real, kind of naked way: What do we need to do to come back from this?”

“It was ultimately really important and awesome to me that it’s never ever that Judy doesn’t love BJ,” provides Patterson, who additionally writes on the present. “She’s just screwed up.”

This culminates on this week’s confrontation, the place BJ, after some teaching and loaner brass knuckles from Jesse (McBride), goes to Stephen’s home to kick his ass. But in basic Gemstones vogue, a second of poisonous catharsis turns into a parade of humiliation, as BJ walks in to search out Stephen buck-ass naked in mattress, furiously masturbating. Stephen then beats the shit out of him.

Photo: Jake Giles Netter/HBO

The battle is each full-blown raunch, ensuring that Stephen’s genitals are in body each time doable, but additionally a well-choreographed brawl that Baltz actually needed to hype himself up for.

“That flight scene was the last two days of work for me this season, so we’re kind of building up to it the entire time,” Baltz says. “I was training, I’d be talking to the director and the stunt coordinator. So I felt really prepared going into it and thankful that it was the last thing, but it’s no less intense.”

Baltz and Schneider have been supported by a stunt group, and Baltz — a comedian actor who had by no means actually carried out a battle scene earlier than — was assured that his stuntman would do the toughest stuff.

“But you have to take a lot of those blows as well!” Baltz says. “And they prepare you for it. But you know, everyone’s got a plan until they get hit in the mouth — and I for sure got hit in the mouth.”

And most fortuitously for him, he wasn’t the naked one within the battle.

“I wish it had been a little warmer out,” Baltz says. “Not just for me, but for Stephen, too.”