Gamby is classic McBride - a big, blustering bully of a jerk, whose outward anger reveals many internal frustrations.
"People say 'You're good at playing assholes'," admits McBride. "But I see these characters as something much deeper than that. I think there are people who are stunted, people who believe that life should be one way and it doesn't turn out that way. I think that's a more interesting character to write than someone who has a heart of gold."
Perhaps the show's biggest point of distinction is that it has an ending.
"We didn't sell it as a series," says McBride. "It's only 18 episodes, and so it's told in two seasons of nine, we approached it like it's a giant novel. When HBO asked us what we wanted to do after Eastbound, we thought about trying to tell a story that had an ending that we could tell before the audience chimed in."
McBride was inspired to tell a longform story by the massive strides being made in dramatic television, citing Mad Men and Breaking Bad as influences.
"These are stories that you need to sit with for weeks on end and we hadn't really seen anybody really doing that with comedies. And so for us to do that it had to have finality. We just turned the last episode in ... it's such a strange dark, dramatic weird story, like I don't think anyone would ever be able to guess where this goes from where it starts."
Vice Principals works as well as it does thanks in large part to Goggins' performance as Gamby's partner-in-crime, a revelatory turn that follows a well-received co-starring role in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight.
His Lee Russell is perhaps the first character to really give McBride's trademark blowhard a run for his money. The actor came on board already a fan of his collaborators.
"I'm a student of Eastbound & Down," Goggins says. "I know it. What Danny and these guys were able to do is sublime. And if you don't see it that way then you just don't get it."
Tune in
When: Tonight, 9pm
Where: Sky Soho
What: A lesson in cult comedy
