If you tuned into the Season 4 premiere of The Righteous Gemstones on Sunday evening only to discover a Civil War drama starring Bradley Cooper, your instinct may have been to double-check that you clicked on the right show. Make no mistake: that period piece kick-off to the final Gemstones season came straight from the mind of series creator and star Danny McBride.
In the standalone episode, the Maestro director plays the OG Elijah Gemstone, a swindler, murderer, and outlaw circa 1862 Virginia. After killing the real pastor Abel Grieves (Josh McDermitt) and assuming his identity, Elijah is recruited to join the Confederate army as a troop minister, his biggest and most profitable con yet. It’s through the endless parade of death and the sparing of his life that Elijah, holding tight to the pure gold Bible he stole from the real Grieves, finds the lord and becomes the first of the Gemstones to find righteousness.
Chatting with Decider ahead of the release of Season 4, McBride explained his reasoning for the special episode and why it felt like the right time to finally introduce this storyline.
“You know, it felt like a fitting way to start the last season, going back and showing maybe how this how this empire began,” McBride explained. “It just felt like it was a fun, creative thing to try to challenge ourselves with. As far as Bradley Cooper, you know, when I wrote the episode, I had no idea who was going to be in it. And then when it came time to cast, I was like, ‘This is a very tall order, none of the cast is in this. It’s a period piece and a different tone. Who could possibly step in here and people wouldn’t be disappointed?’”
Cooper, a 12-time Academy Award nominee whose body of work includes everything from A Star Is Born to Guardians of the Galaxy to American Sniper, may not be the immediate person that comes to mind when someone thinks of television comedies, but that didn’t make any difference to McBride. He said that Cooper was the personification of who he saw as the Gemstones’ ancestor, even though he never dreamed the acclaimed actor would say yes.
“I just like threw off the cuff like, ‘[We need] somebody awesome like Bradley Cooper.’ And then, my producing partners were like, ‘Well, why don’t we just ask Bradley Cooper?’” McBride shared. “He’s not going to do the Gemstones, is he?’ I reached out and gave it to him and he responded he wanted to do it.”
In the modern timeline, the series follows Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) and his three children — Jesse (McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Adam Devine) — thriving Southern televangelists with cash to burn and lessons to learn. Despite channeling the same energy of the modern-day Gemstones perfectly in his performance, Cooper admitted right off the bat to McBride and the other writers that he had never seen an episode of their HBO comedy.
The secret of Cooper’s casting was kept under wraps until the episode’s release, although there was one big clue as to his involvement prior to its debut. The first tip-off to a potential collaboration came via a photo posted to Reddit in 2023, showing Cooper sporting a Bible Bonkers t-shirt while running errands. Fans of the show know that Bible Bonkers is the fictional game show hosted by Baby Billy (Walton Goggins), where devout Christians put their knowledge of the good book to the test. Was Cooper subtly signaling what was to come?
“He had actually never even seen the show before and he said that he wanted to hold off on watching until he was done shooting because he didn’t want to have it influence what he was going to do,” McBride said of Cooper joining the series. “I just thought it was awesome. And it was kind of amazing how he felt like a Gemstone even without seeing any of it.”
Couldn’t agree more. All hail the first of the righteous Gemstone family members!
The first episode of The Righteous Gemstones Season 4 is currently streaming on Max. New episodes premiere Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
