Danny McBride on that Vice Principals Twist

By Reuben Levine | Sep 20, 2016

Danny McBride talks that final scene

The first season of Vice Principals wasn’t perfect. It’s likely that the second season won’t be perfect either; it’s just not in this show’s trajectory. Over the course of nine uneven episodes Vice Principals occasionally brought greatness to the table, usually through Walton Goggins as Russell. The finale continued in the same vein of the previous eight episodes but added a pretty far out there twist. Oh, spoiler alert.

So Gamby was shot at the end of the season. Shocking, but not out of the realm of possibility on a show like this. Danny McBride say down with Uproxx to talk about that and the series in general. McBride is asked about the fate of his character right off the bat, but he’s not talking. It’s not too likely that Vice Principals is going to kill off one of its two main characters, so there’s not a huge hook there.

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Danny McBride does, however, openly admit that both Gamby and Russell are the villains of the show. Which is good, because they are:

"“I think that’s part of the reason why we chose to follow the villains in the story instead of the hero. When you have a show where the two characters that you’re supposed to be rooting for burn down a woman’s house in the second episode, I think it’s fair to say that most people don’t have any clue where the show is going to go from there.”"

But it’s not that clear-cut, and McBride doesn’t necessarily want to box the characters in like that. The show itself is open about that — Gamby and Russell aren’t great guys, but they usually try where it counts.

"“We like to keep it open so that people can read whatever they want…When I came up with the idea for this story, the Hollywood version of it was you would follow Belinda Brown as she tries to battle these two guys that have it out for her.”"

That version proved too boring, so they flipped it around. Vice Principals does have a certain unpredictable quality to it, and that’s part of why it’s able to get by despite some of its faults. Season two will be directed by David Green, and McBride says that it will play to his strengths. We’ll have to wait until next year to see.

Next: Vice Principals Recap: The End of the Line

Make sure to read the full interview to find out how the election cycle did or didn’t influence the writing and also what McBride thinks of the current comedy climate.