“Amber is definitely a wife and she definitely plays a role, but I don’t think of her that way. I think of it as a pretty bad-ass female character in a really incredible show,” Cassidy Freeman tells Gold Derby in an exclusive interview about starring on “The Righteous Gemstones” (watch the video above). Freeman explains about the eponymous characters, “You feel for these people; they have depth to them — they’re not just one- or two-note characters. They’re very complicated people and I hope that that is something that pulls people in even further than a regular comedy would.”
After “Eastbound and Down” and “Vice Principals,” this new comedy is the third on HBO this decade from hyphenate Danny McBride, who also leads the cast as Amber’s televangelist husband Jesse Gemstone. “I didn’t have a lot of life experience lending me to this character,” Freeman laughs about how unfamiliar she was with the megachurch world of the show, but calls herself “glad” not to have been able to draw on a religious upbringing in her process: “I don’t want to be mimicking anyone. I also want to find the truth in these people.”
“The Righteous Gemstones” finished airing its first season earlier this month, out-rating its higher-profile lead-in “Succession” and lead-out “Ballers.” Officially renewed for a second season last month, Freeman updates that “it’s being written currently in Charleston,” expecting to start shooting in February or March.
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