‘I Can’t Believe I’m Not Doing Bible Bonkers Right Now’

Spoilers follow for The Righteous Gemstones season-three finale, “Wonders That Cannot Be Fathomed, Miracles That Cannot Be Counted.” 

Walton Goggins is game for anything The Righteous Gemstones asks of him. As Uncle Baby Billy, the former child star who continues to desperately grasp at any level of fame his connection to the Gemstone family will provide, he’s sung and clogged, used that dazzlingly bright grin to sell a shady health elixir, accepted a beating from the son he abandoned and then joyously pulled another son out of a portable toilet, and sparred with all the Gemstone children while also insisting he’s their mentor. He’s a whirling dervish of megalomania and narcissism, but also a savvy businessman who knows that celebrity is true currency, and Goggins plays him like a charismatic contradiction.

Sporting an array of ostentatious suits and that bright-white pompadour, Goggins is lithe and spry one moment as Baby Billy prances around a hotel pool singing about a fated payday, then exhausted and hunched as he escapes the swarm of locusts destroying his Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers set. He’s caring and devoted to wife Tiffany (Valyn Hall), and insistent that their son, Lionel, be treated like a real Gemstone by cousins Jesse (series creator Danny McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson), and Kelvin (Adam DeVine), but not attentive enough to stop the toddler from eating cigarettes and dirt. Most often, Baby Billy insists on big gestures and grand proclamations that don’t work out — but he has a hopeful and resilient essence that Goggins conveys with a sly wink and a resigned smile. That combination of toxic ambition and irrepressible charm is a Goggins signature, and a duality he’s flexed in a number of roles, including in Vice Principals (his previous collaboration with McBride), Sons of Anarchy, The Shield, and his career-defining turn as outlaw Boyd Crowder on Justified.

“What is success, and what does it mean for him? It means true respect for himself,” Goggins says of Baby Billy’s third-season antics, including his attempt to force out Kelvin and Judy with a hologram of their mother and his sister, Aimee-Leigh (Jennifer Nettles), and his insistence that the Gemstone children order Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers to series for their streaming service. “Will he always be in search of that or always need that from other people? I would think so, but selfishly, I hope not. But you know, at the end of the day, we’re all dreamers.”

Over two phone calls from Italy, where his and McBride’s families met up for a brief shared vacation, Goggins spoke about the joys and challenges of staying in character as the forever-anxious Baby Billy; his chemistry with his costars, including longtime friend Shea Whigham; and the empathetic core of The Righteous Gemstones, which was recently renewed for a fourth season.

This interview, conducted prior to the SAG strike, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You’ve said: “Nobody makes me laugh the way somebody from the South can make me laugh.” When you were first reading the scripts for season three, what about Baby Billy and his arc made you laugh?
I could say singing this song in a clamshell. I could say his desire to rip off one of the most well-known game shows of all time and make it his own. But it was really being a fan of all the actors who were going to be on this journey with us this season. That made me laugh. Thinking about how Steve Zahn was going to play that role, or Shea Whigham was going to play that role. It tickles me to read other people’s story lines as much as it does my own. But I think the thing that was so heartening to me was — you know what? I’m looking at Danny McBride right now. Look at this guy. You’re so sexy. You’re so unbelievably sexy.

The thing that I think I was most excited about was for Baby Billy not to be in a place of pain, not to be saddled with carrying any real emotional weight. He was purely self-serving, and just open and free to do anything. The thing that I didn’t know once I started reading is whether he was actually going to do Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers as a show. When the script came out, I was on the floor laughing at the whole spectacle and everybody’s involvement, and the way that it speaks to family and Baby Billy’s need to be at the center of attention. He’s the perfect nexus and creates the perfect opportunity for all of these families to come together.

The Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers set is so elaborate. There’s a gigantic sign of your face. You’re singing and doing stand-up as the host. What was that like?
Richard Wright is the production designer who Danny, David Gordon Green, and Jody Hill have worked with from the very beginning and is a dear friend of theirs from college, and he’s a dear friend of mine. He created something that felt as if it already existed in the world, and they let me come and play on my own with very few people around. I was able to walk through it and understand the scale of it. When you get that opportunity, you want to open that gift and play with every part of it.

We have these wonderful choreographers. I walked in and they had done something, and it was really good, but it was a bit fancy. I said, “This is great, but what if we do none of this? [Laughs] I’m a 72-year-old man. If I can make it down these steps and through these break-dancers, and I can do my version of a modified Tina Turner ‘Proud Mary’ dance while everyone else is doing turns and I just have one turn or two turns, then I think we will have won.” And we did it, man. I was overcome, really, with excitement and joy. It’s about an eight-minute take. It was as if we had a three-camera setup, and they called “action,” and the announcer came on, and then we came out and we did the dance number, and we went right into what Danny had written. It was euphoric. I can’t believe that I’m not doing Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers right now. I can’t believe it’s not my real job.

The Gemstone children aren’t living as you would expect a pious, religious family to live. I was surprised, though, by the locust swarm at the end of the season, and by the sense that the series was now getting very explicitly religious with that reference.
This is filled with stories from the Bible and metaphors that can be interpreted theologically and my God, a day of locusts will come for all of us! It is overtly religious, and it is cleansing, isn’t it? They take everything. Everything is gone, and maybe that’s what this family needs. Maybe that’s what this fucking country needs. Maybe that’s what we’ve all needed, as a world. I guess on some level, if everyone in the world watched The Righteous Gemstones and they saw the locusts kind of coming, maybe the world would change because they would laugh during the process. [Laughs]

The series uses that moment to say these people are not necessarily who they present themselves to be. They bicker and fight, but they also love each other and care for each other. Faced with the locusts, they reassess.
Inherent in pretty much every faith on the planet is forgiveness, and loving your god with all that you have and walking a mile in another person’s shoes and empathy. As much as this show is about making people laugh, there’s also a part of that: Live what you preach. Walk the walk. And a part of the journey for everybody on this show has been about, Hey, man, you made a mistake. I have forgiveness in my heart, and I need to look at my own self, and don’t throw stones in glass houses.

When they were filming that, we all had our moment with the locusts. It’s your turn on the stage where the fake locusts are going to be placed, and you have to react. How is Baby Billy doing this? Nobody really knew what I was going to do, ’cause I didn’t know what I was going to do, to be quite honest. You just turn yourself over to imaginary circumstances, and the locusts are coming. He stuck his head up above the podium, and he was just being hit left and right, nonstop, by these locusts, and then he comes back down out of it, which was funny — but it was the second time that he did it that it was really funny. I didn’t know I was going to do that. They left the camera rolling, and I looked over at the end of it, and Danny was on the floor laughing. That’s when you know you had a good day, when you can make these guys laugh without trying. You can’t try to make them laugh. You just live your truth and you do it with conviction, and that’s what they find funny. That’s what I find funny.

I read an interview where you talked about auditioning for Eastbound & Down and being told by Danny, “There’s a danger to you, Goggins.” Can you talk about your friendship? When did you first meet?
I was a fan of Danny’s for such a long time, and I think he was a fan of mine. I knew David from the film-festival circuit, when my partners and I were making movies through Sundance and this short film that we did, The Accountant, and then our first feature, Chrystal. I was doing Django Unchained in New Orleans, and at the same time Danny was doing This Is the End, and I ran into him backstage at Jazz Fest. Early on in my career, I had these people who I didn’t stalk, but maybe I stalked them mentally. In my own mind, in my own kind of theology, I was at a place in my life, and I still kind of believe, that you can manifest these things. I did that with Bob Duvall on The Apostle. I was a big fan of Owen Wilson’s, and then we did Shanghai Noon together, and we became friends. Danny was in that group of people. I put it out to the universe: He’s a guy that I think we would do something special together. Then we had this really long conversation after that audition for Eastbound & Down, when we were at a friend’s mutual New Year’s Eve party. He said, “I have this thing I’m working on; I’d like you to read it.” He sent Vice Principals when I was doing The Hateful Eight, and he said, “I think your danger has a place here, if you want to jump on this train with me.” I read it and we talked, and that was it. After that first day, we went out to dinner, and I knew this guy was going to be one of my best friends and a collaborator for a long time to come.

Baby Billy singing is now such a fixture of the show. How did filming go for “There’ll Come a Payday,” where you’re performing poolside wearing the clamshell outfit?
I’ve come to a point with these guys, Rough House and the people that they work with, where we’re all a family. I trust them implicitly. I had been working on something else, so my time on the show this year was limited; I wasn’t able to be there as much as I would have liked to have been. But Danny writes to people’s availability and what they can give. When I showed up and I tried on that outfit for the very first time, I thought, This is special. I’d not seen this before. I didn’t anticipate it. No one showed me any drawings. I put it on and I felt the way that Baby Billy feels about himself. [Laughs] He feels that special. I was really blown away by it.

I’d been working on the song for the better part of a month. I did not anticipate the performance going that way. I saw it in my head one way, but of course, it never works out quite like that. Danny really saw it going in another direction, and once I understood he wanted to tell this story in small vignettes, then I brought my own thing to it. He would set up his shots and say, “You gotta get from here to here. However you get from here to here, it’s up to you, baby. Let’s go.” It was so freeing. I would like to say that one feels like they’re stepping out on a limb on this show, but you’re not, really, because you know that they’ll always catch you. And it’s been that way for the better part of what, almost a decade? Nine years we’ve been doing this now, between the two seasons of Vice Principals and now three seasons of The Righteous Gemstones.

I want to ask you about the Y2K partying scene with Shea as Dusty Daniels.
I can’t believe it — you are the first person who brought that up.

On Justified, you and Shea had one scene together that my partner and I quote all the time, when Boyd Crowder carjacks Shea’s character, and before killing him declares, “I’m an outlaw.” This scene, with drugs, sex, and someone who might be Gene Hackman, is completely different. What was it like to work together on this end-of-the-world orgy?
I’ve been a fan of his since All the Real Girls and admired him from afar and was able to tell him what a fan I was of his. Over the course of our time together in Charleston doing Vice Principals, we became really good friends. Before then, I was doing The Hateful Eight and it was closing in on the end of Justified, and I was filming them simultaneously. This scene came down the pike, and it was maybe the most important scene in the evolution of Boyd Crowder. It was a line that was about to be crossed that he could never come back from, but it fully explained his worldview and how he saw himself in the world. I asked them, “Can we get Shea Whigham for that? Because no one will deliver like Shea in that moment.” We did get him, and Shea was gracious enough to come and play with us. I told him what this meant to me personally — what it means to the show, yes, but what it means to me to go through this experience with you. We got to work that day and it was as if we’d never met. He works very similarly to the way that I work in that we just looked at each other from across the dirt parking lot and just kind of nodded. No words were exchanged. Got in the car, didn’t talk, until they rolled and yelled “Action!” We did it maybe two or three times and that was it. We got everything that we needed, and I’m forever grateful to him. I did the same thing for a pilot that I did for CBS; I said, “Just get me Shea Whigham.” He’s the sauce, he’s the special, special sauce.

When he came down to do this, I didn’t fully understand and I don’t think Shea fully understood exactly what that was going to be. We had a glass of wine — I think a bottle of wine — and said, “Here we go.” We showed up and met the intimacy coordinator, Zuri Pryor-Graves, who was much more willing to push the boundaries than we were. [Laughs] It’s like, “Wait a minute, you’re supposed to police this!” But she did it with grace and with humor, and everybody involved in that room just went for it. When you have Jody Hill behind the camera, you know he’s gonna do something very specific. I think we probably did it 15 times. You think it’s awkward, and it’s awkward the very first time, and then afterward, everyone’s just like talking and bullshitting in between takes. It becomes nothing. At the end of it, Jody said, “Just look at each other like, ‘I’m going to fuck everything. I’m going to fuck you too!’” We just got to that place. It’s just trust and honesty. Afterward, we both laughed to no end.

You gotta tell me, what did you think of the sex scene? Were you surprised by it? Did it make you laugh? Did it make you gasp?

It was hilarious. What I appreciate is that these characters have certain aspects of their personalities that are very fixed and others that are very malleable. So on the one hand, maybe Uncle Baby Billy slept with Dusty Daniels.
[Bursts into laughter]

On the other hand, I’m not surprised by that at all.
At all! 

Vulture interviewed the actors who play the younger versions of Jesse and Judy, and they said that you’re in character from the moment you get on set. Can you talk about your process?
Yeah, I do do that, but I don’t think about that. I think words are very powerful, so the idea of playing a character makes you separate from that character. I don’t look at it as getting into character. I look at it as, I’m there to play pretend. That’s my job, and I take that job very seriously. I like to be alone when I’m working. I don’t like to talk about what’s going on. I don’t like to talk about me, or Walton, or anything in my life. I don’t want anything to take me out of the ability to play pretend. Everybody has their process, and it’s all very private.

I guess I can say this: I get to work, I talk to people – “Hey, hello, good morning, how are you” — and then put the hair and makeup on, and it’s like, Now we’re here. I go into my trailer and I put my clothes on, and when I walk out, I’m whoever it is I’m being asked to play. I move through my day that way. I sit by myself and just am there in this person’s thoughts — not for any other reason than I enjoy it. I enjoy that part of the process. I’ve worked with a lot of my heroes now, and people who I really look up to, and that’s how they approach it. For me, it’s just much easier to be in that headspace and access my imagination then it is to step out of it and do the New York Times Spelling Bee. [Laughs] I leave my phone in my room for the most part. I’m there to play pretend, and that’s what I get from it. Selfishly, it’s what I get from it. Then as soon as we wrap, I leave it at work.

I wanted to ask if that amount of focus gets lonely, but the way you speak about the process as this world of pretend makes me think I’m projecting something into that question.
It is lonely, because I don’t really communicate with people outside of this exchange of lines and ideas in the space between “action” and “cut.” But I just get so much fucking joy out of that moment, and that freedom of being ready for that moment. I don’t take it for granted, and I’ve never taken it for granted, ever, in my entire career. For me, the work that is involved with setting yourself up in a way that makes it very easy for you to play pretend in between “action” and “cut” is the thing that I live for, and a part of that process for me is staying in the headspace of whoever it is that I’m playing. Baby Billy is no exception, and he’s exhausting. It’s hard to be that fucking insecure all day long.

Baby Billy so clearly adores his wife, Tiffany. It always feels like they’re in on a joke no one else knows. How do you and Valyn Hall work together?
I was there with her the first day, and it was a pretty big day that first season. It’s the scene in the church, and I don’t know her, and she doesn’t know me. I met her in the makeup chair, “Hi, hello, Valyn, lovely to meet you, I’m Walton.” But then when the clothes come on and you walk out of the trailer, you’re not Valyn Hall. You’re Tiff, and you’re the love of my life. You never know if that chemistry’s gonna be there, but for me, I think the chemistry’s always there if you’re open to it. My chemistry’s always been pretty good with people, and maybe that’s because I don’t really bring myself into it.

The first fucking thing we did after the first cut, I looked at Danny and David and I mouthed, “God, she’s so good.” And that was that. She trusted me and I trusted her, even without talking about it, even without having that conversation. Sometimes I think that’s better than laying things out at the beginning of it, ad nauseam talking about “How do you feel?” “Well, how do you feel?” People don’t discuss how they feel that often. What if we just see what happens? And in the mess that is The Righteous Gemstones, this deep, deep love and respect that is without condition just found its way. I’m not getting anything from her … except maybe idolatry. [Laughs] She idolizes him, but it’s so much deeper than that. And she’s not really getting much from me, other than someone who can light up maybe not every room, but her room. I can’t say enough about Valyn and the love that they have for each other and the joy that I have playing pretend with her and having that love always be in the room. It’s not manufactured. It’s real.

There’s a moment where Baby Billy is showing the Aimee-Leigh hologram to Jesse for the first time, and you wink at her, and she smiles back at you. I remember thinking, They love each other so much.
They love each other so much, and they worked so hard on this dumbass scheme to manipulate their nephew emotionally into fucking backing their ripoff of Family Feud. [Laughs] It’s so fucking stupid.

When you look back on Baby Billy’s arc this season, do you think he’s happy? He’s very settled now into being a father and husband. But he’s also still chasing fame through Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers. Did you approach it as, Baby Billy has reached comfort at this point, or do you think there will always be a part of him that’s searching for something else?
I think those are the people who saved civilizations, aren’t they? When our numbers were reduced to 2,000 — they were able to track that through DNA — it was the people who wanted something else who kept moving. I think that that’s him. Is his appetite for being seen insatiable? Probably. What is success, and what does it mean for him? It means true respect for himself. I can’t tell you if he’s ever going to reach that place, but I can say that he has, in a number of facets of his life. He loves his wife, he’s happy in his marriage, he’s happy as a father. Is he happy about where he is as an artist or his recognition? No. Will he ever get that? I don’t know. Will he, until the end of this experience, whenever that happens, always be in search of that or always need that from other people? I would think so, but selfishly, I hope not. But you know, at the end of the day, we’re all dreamers.

If you were to compete on a game show, what kind of categories do you think you’d do well with?
Restaurants in towns in America, or restaurants in foreign cities. Cool things to do in towns in America, and cool things to do in ten cities that we all visit.

What I’m hearing is that there should be a Walton Goggins travel show.
Oh, absolutely. I have these lists that I make of places that I go, and I share them with people often. I like being a resource for people who are exploring places in the world, and feel like they can trust my recommendations, how I travel and what I seek from my travels. That would be the category that I would kill in. It’s a very specific category. [Laughs] It’s not going from specific to general. It’s really, really specific.

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