We’re in a golden age of male full-frontal nudity on television, in no small part thanks to the brave contributions of The Righteous Gemstones. Danny McBride’s HBO comedy about the familial dramas roiling an evangelical megachurch has never been one to shy away from hanging dong. But there was a scene in season three, episode six, “For Out of the Heart Comes Evil Thoughts,” that left me both convulsing in laughter and completely lost for words. Forget the shock value attempted by other HBO shows this year—this was the first time I can remember thinking, Are you even allowed to do that on TV?
To summarize, Judy Gemstone (Edi Patterson) has been two-timing her husband BJ (Tim Baltz) with Stephen (Stephen Schneider), a guitarist on her Judy on Top tour. When the affair comes to light, passive BJ decides to kick Stephen’s ass once and for all. He barges into Stephen’s home, brass knuckles in hand, only to find his romantic rival naked and pleasuring himself to Kenny Rogers’s song “Daytime Friends.” BJ ostensibly has the upper hand (no pun intended), until the frosted-tipped, tramp-stamped, and completely naked Stephen brutally thrashes around. BJ ultimately prevails, but not before some nude man fighting that goes down in history somewhere between the Eastern Promises bathhouse fight scene and the Northman volcano fight scene.
Like most jokes in the Danny McBride universe, it’s both deeply funny and an unexpectedly searing exploration of masculinity and its discontents. We got Tim Baltz and Stephen Schneider on the line to chat about what it was like to film the wildest TV scene of the year.
GQ: Tim, BJ has been such a long-suffering character throughout the whole run of The Righteous Gemstones. What did you think when you first got the script for the season and learned that, on top of everything else, Judy’s going to be having an affair?
Tim Baltz: It made sense that Judy would think that she’s a rock star, and that’s how she’s supposed to behave. And for dramatic purposes, putting that conflict in would drive a really big storyline and make people care about these characters even more. So I knew that it would lead to something interesting but, by the time I got to episode six, I was shocked at what I had read. So I think my first question was just, well, who’s playing this Stephen guy? Who do I have to fight naked?
Stephen, do you remember your character description? He’s very specific, with his frosted tips and his nineties tattoos.
Stephen Schneider: There wasn’t a ton of detail on my end when I first auditioned for it. I’d already been a tremendous fan of the show. All I knew was that he’s stuck in the doldrums of middle-aged life, and he’s having an affair with Judy. And I knew that he was an aging rock star who got fired from Guitar Center. I was able to align a lot of that to what was going on in my own professional career, being my age and trying to make it as an actor. But I knew nothing about the fight scene.
So this fight scene comes up. What were your first impressions reading it?
Tim: I mean, I was definitely shocked. Jonathan Watson, who was directing it, I would see him every once in a while on set. And he’d pull me aside, and he’d give me hints about how they were going to film it and what the stunts would look like. Everyone was just really excited.
Stephen: When I knew that I was up for the part, I got a third phone call right before they closed the deal. They were like, “Are you comfortable wearing a prosthetic penis?” I was like, “I would do fucking anything to be on this show. Yes, no problem.” And then I got to set, and on the first day when I was getting my hair dyed, Tim came over and he introduced himself so graciously and Edi as well. They were so kind.
Then Jonathan Watson brings me into his trailer and he’s like, “So you want to wear the prosthetic penis?” I hadn’t read anything. I was like, “I don’t even know what the story is. Is the joke that he has a really large penis, or he has a really small penis? Because I’m regular to below regular.” And he’s like, “No, no, no, it’s just regular.” I was like, “I can deliver that.” He offered me the opportunity to wear the prosthetic, but I felt like it’s one of these chances—and you don’t get a ton of these later in life—to test yourself the way you are when you’re a kid and your friends are like, “go swim out to that rock on the lake.” I was a nervous wreck about it, to be entirely honest with you. By they schedule this fucking thing on the very last day of my filming.
When did you end up filming?
Tim: The second week of December. It’s 50 degrees and drizzling rain out.
Stephen: I was beside myself, the whole lead up to this. I’m sweating it. I don’t really even remember performing on the show because the entire time, I’m just thinking about this scene. I was really so worried about it. I started dieting. I was doing intermittent fasting. I figured if I could make my body smaller, maybe my penis would look bigger. Jonathan Watson said, “What do you need from us?” I was like, “Just do me a favor. Can you just heat the house up as warm as possible so that I at least have a shot here?”
Oh, by the way, we shot this on a Monday. On Friday, I go into the trailer for my scene and they’re like, “So we have some bad news for you. Your stunt double fell out, but the good news is we found a replacement for you. The only thing is he’s completely shorn. He has no body hair whatsoever.” And they hold up a Mach three. And they’re like, “Would you mind shaving your whole body?” And I was like, “Please don’t make me do this.”
And they were amazing. They flew in hair to put on the stunt double.
Tim: Wait, they put pubes on the stunt double?
Stephen: Yeah. By the way, no one even had this conversation. They never saw me naked. They never saw the stunt double naked. And so I don’t know how they thought our penises were going to match.
Thanks for answering the big prosthetic question right off the top. I will say, we are seeing a lot more male frontal nudity onscreen these days. But did either of you question whether you could even do this on TV?
Tim: I’m very interested to see the response in a week. Danny and his team, they’re always very good at pushing those boundaries in a way that incorporates drama and stakes for characters. As far as what my character has gone through on the show, this is probably the most intense moment. The frontal nudity is kind of ancillary to the plot. It’s there, and it might be funny, but you forget about it pretty quick I think. [Ed. note: No you don’t.] I think that the storytelling usually becomes the primary thing that you’re focusing on.
Stephen: Especially because you’re tracking this emotional arc of BJ’s story, who we’ve been following from the beginning, and he’s cuckolded in some fashion through this. It is funny how male nudity is such a thing in this country that we’re even having a discussion about it. I feel like men, at least when I was growing up or how I’ve perceived this is, you could really boil a man down to the size of his penis. And there’s nothing left outside of that. That’s kind of that aggro male culture that’s so ingrained in us.
Tim: The contrast is odd too, because we’re also incredibly prudish about it. There’s this parallel prudishness that says, “never talk about it, be ashamed of it.” Putting it in a scene like this, everything drops out. I think people are going to be more focused on Stephen’s tramp stamp than his penis.
The tramp stamp reveal was great. Of course the character has a tramp stamp!
Stephen: Well, that’s actually mine. But just to tag one other thing onto that. I do feel like, for me, it was important once I heard the storyline to be emotionally naked and truly naked. Obviously the goal of any actor is to try to get as close to the truth or as vulnerable as possible. What I think Danny and the writers always do incredibly well is they create these characters that are suffering and have some major vulnerability. Every character has some weakness that needs to be exposed.
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Did you have any conversations with Danny and the writers about the inspirations behind that scene, or why they ended up writing it that way?
Stephen: There was a shift in the script while we were filming.
Tim: Originally, BJ lost the fight. I don’t want to spoil anything, but in the season finale, BJ behaved in a certain way. And Danny switched it so that BJ wins the fight, and Judy behaves that way. I remember I was driving home and Danny called and was like, “Hey, I just did a rewrite in episode six.” I’m driving in the back roads in South Carolina, so service is going in and out and I’m not quite understanding what he’s saying. I got home, I read it, and I was like, “Oh, wow, okay. I understand why they made this shift.” All the Gemstones, they behave from a place of suffering. And they have so much money that they don’t necessarily feel the consequences of their behaviors sometimes because they have status over these people. Well, all the characters face that this season.
What did you think once you finally got to watch the scene?
Stephen: I haven’t seen it.
Tim: Oh, buddy. Oh, dude, just wait.
Stephen: I’m terrified, dude. Honestly, I’m very nervous about it. I feel like there’s my life before this aired, and then there’s my life after it aired. And I think I’m not married after that point.
Tim: No, you’re well represented in the range that you speak of. But the brutality. One thing that Jonathan Watson had told us, Stephen specifically, he was like, “You’re like T-1000 as you go through this fight. Just emotionless, brutal.” BJ’s worked himself up to a point where he thinks this is a good idea, even though it’s so out of character. And when he realizes that he’s in over his head, he wanted Stephen to be emotionless, just destroying me through the house and out into the yard.
And this took a day and a half to film?
Tim: Yeah. We finished outside at golden hour in freezing drizzling rain.
Stephen: Yeah, I was like, guys, I need five minutes. I run to the bathroom. I’m looking at pictures of my wife trying to get some blood flow down there. They’re like, “Stephen, we need you. We’re losing light.” The thing with my penis is it has range. It can be Al Pacino or it can be like Danny DeVito.
Tim: It’s like Abraham Lincoln’s face. They said from every angle it looked different. And believe me, I got close enough to know.
SAG-AFTRA members are currently on strike; as part of the strike, union actors are not promoting their film and TV projects. This interview was conducted prior to the strike.