Crave Online: So you kept the title after all.
Danny McBride: Yeah, we tried to change the title. We tried to come up with new ideas but nothing stuck. It was like trying to make your own nickname. That's what we've been calling it. We just kept it.
Crave Online: How do you do what you and Jody Hill do in movies, on TV?
Danny McBride: You know what? Because this is HBO, there's not really any boundaries with what we're doing so it's not much different. It's very filthy. My parents won't be allowed to watch it so it's pretty similar to what we're doing in film, yeah.
Crave Online: How about the short format of episodes but the long format of series?
Danny McBride: Well, we approached this, we wanted to keep it small at six episodes. We kind of constructed it so it would just play out like a three hour movie. Every episode picks up where the last one left off and it's constructed like it's just one story. There's consequences and things that happen in each episode that changes the dynamic of the show pretty much every episode. It's not like we just hit reset and everyone goes back to how they were in the beginning. Things change and it evolves and tells a larger tale.
Crave Online: Your characters seem to have this frustrating desperation. How do you turn that on, because I don't get that in person?
Danny McBride: Yeah, exactly. That's just an element that I think just growing up in the south too, I think I've just known men like that and known people that are supposed to be role models and sculptors of young men's minds that even as a kid I could pick up on the sort of desperation or just people really weren't who they wanted to be or they didn't really know how to deal with their anger. I don't know, we just find endless humor in the angry southern man. I think that's our well. We like it.
Crave Online: Is the mullet making a comeback?
Danny McBride: I hope not. That was like a halo. I didn't have to wear it all the time. It was disgusting. It was pretty gross.
Crave Online: Who are the prototypical southern actors you'd like to work with?
Danny McBride: I'm a big fan of Billy Bob Thornton's. I love him. I know Robert Duvall lives in Virginia but I'm not sure if he's a true southerner. I don't know if he's from the south or not. Who else? I'm trying to think, I don't know.
Crave Online: How different is your life now than a year and a half ago?
Danny McBride: A year and a half ago I probably wouldn't be in this room with microphones all [around me.] No, it's much different. We've been out here all together trying to make things happen for a while. Jody's idea was to go shoot Foot Fist Way and just go make this film, put our balls to the wall and we did it. You know, it's just paid off. We were lucky that we followed him down there.
Crave Online: Do you get recognized a lot now?
Danny McBride: It happens more and more. I have a lot more Facebook friends than I used to have. That's cool. It doesn't happen at the level of annoyance where I can't go places. It just happens enough where you're just flattered that people are taking notice of what you're doing.
Crave Online: Do they know you by name or just "Aren't you that guy?"
Danny McBride: The cool ones know me by name, yeah.
Crave Online: When Will Ferrell and Adam McKay take an interest in your work, did they take you to Judd Apatow and Ben Stiller?
Danny McBride: No, everyone just kind of found it on their own. It was really weird. We went to Sundance and we had the film there but we didn't get a distribution deal there. We got international distribution but no domestic deal, so we just went back to our jobs after Sundance and the film was getting passed around, unbeknownst to us in a lot of ways. We weren't really sure of the scope of how it had reached people but it kind of found Ben, it found Judd and we ended up just meeting all these guys we admired for so long.
Crave Online: Did Will give you any tips on nude scenes?
Danny McBride: He did. He showed me how to squeeze it in. It was really nice of him.
Crave Online: How much balance between generating your own projects and being an actor for hire is ahead of you?
Danny McBride: You know, I didn't really have any interest in the beginning to go into acting at all. We all went to film school together and were writing and directing. So the acting thing was nothing I ever planned on but I do enjoy doing it. We just would act in each other's films out of necessity because we didn't know any actors. So I do want to, I find the most gratification out of doing stuff that we've written or stuff that's in our tone. I like that stuff the most so it'll be a healthy balance.
Crave Online: Will you only do comedy?
Danny McBride: You know, even the show, it tips into areas that it just goes a little darker and a little more serious than you'd expect something like this to go. Right now it's been comedies but I just like a good story so it doesn’t have to be funny necessarily for me to dig it.
Crave Online: Is this similar in tone to Foot Fist Way?
Danny McBride: You know, it is but I think there's a lot of growth in here. We've learned a lot from what we've done. I think our writing's grown, we've grown as people and some of the themes that we're exploring I think a little deeper tones but it's our sense of humor and it's our sensibilities that are here. I just think it's a little more refined and polished.
Crave Online: How much exposure to Hollywood did you have before Foot Fist and Sundance?
Danny McBride: It was like I waited tables on people who were working in Hollywood. That was my exposure. We were out here just trying to do whatever we could to make it. We were PAs on sh*tty TV shows. I was a cameraman for VH1 for a while. We were just kind of doing whatever we could to pay the bills and just trying to write in the meantime.
Crave Online: Did you ever wait on anybody you subsequently worked with?
Danny McBride: No, no. I waited tables in Burbank, at a sh*tty restaurant there. Nobody came to sit there.
Crave Online: Where is your character at at the start of the show?
Danny McBride: You know, Kenny Powers is a guy who the glory days of his life are definitely behind him. He kind of envisions himself as some classic epic hero and he just kind of looks at his life like this is the dark part of my life. I will make a comeback. I will make a return. I think it's just kind of this guy dealing with the fact slowly that like his life isn't necessarily a classic story, that it might not involve a return to greatness. It might just have to involve getting used to the man he is now.
Crave Online: How much leeway do you have to improvise in this format?
Danny McBride: We had a lot. That's pretty crucial to how we work. We really plot out everything and take a lot of care with the script but we like to also just keep ourselves loose enough to let us kind of explore and go there on the set because the fact that we think the only thing we can come up with is sitting in a room, once you're there on the set with the people who are actually playing the parts, it would be foolish to limit yourself and not capture what could happen.
Crave Online: How many takes would you do?
Danny McBride: We would do a lot. We would roll multiple cameras on a lot of stuff so that if we improv'ed things, there would be ways to cut around it. We shot a lot of film on this thing. It's been a bitch in the editing room. You will cut a scene 20 different ways, like I don't even know which one's the funniest anymore.
