Praise be to he, we have been graced with another season of The Righteous Gemstones. (And now a fourth is coming, too.) From “no-sex cheating” to doomsday preppers, season three brought us even deeper into the lives of the Gemstone megachurch and the family at the heart of it. It also brought the genius costume design of Christina Flannery, who joined the show after costume designer Sarah Trost bedazzled the cast for seasons one and two.
An über-rich family of megachurch leaders doesn’t exactly sound like the most likable gang, but thanks to the marvelous mind of Danny McBride we somehow find ourselves endeared to, even rooting for these deeply flawed people. And that’s also to Flannery’s credit. A Southerner herself, she immersed herself in the culture of megachurches to get the world of Gemstones right. But she never lost the human beings behind the juvenile bravado of Gemstone kid (McBride as Jesse, Edi Patterson as Judy, and Adam Devine as Kelvin) or their gentle, complex father, Eli (John Goodman.) Flannery’s clothes helped to communicate everything from Judy’s struggle to be taken seriously (and the frayed gender dynamics in her family and the church) to Eli’s slightly uneasy transition out of a church leadership role and into the leisure of retirement. She does it all while striking a delicate balance between the absurdism and the hyperrealism that is quintessential to the show.
“The keyword for this show is ‘stunted’,” says Flannery of costuming the larger-than-life Gemstone kids and the world around them. And whether she’s dressing Judy in a figure-skating-inspired outfit or John Goodman in some shiny new retirement digs, the lifeblood of the South runs deep, onscreen and off.
Vanity Fair: What was it like coming in for season three? Were you already a fan?
Christina Flannery: I’m a huge Danny McBride fan. I mean, who isn’t? It was a match made in heaven. Before I did this, everyone would always say, you should be working on a Danny McBride show; that kind of high stylistic, hyperrealism, comedy—stuff like that.
And I was a fan of the show. I’m from the South, and I’ve had some weird religious upbringing myself. So I loved season one and two, and I know Sarah [Trost], who designed season one and two. What I also love about Righteous Gemstones is that every season has some kind of storyline that doesn’t necessarily tie to the season before, or we’ll get new characters that need to be heavily costumed. So it was so fun for me to work with a reality-based megachurch, but then when we have characters like Keefe or BJ or Kelvin—any of them, really—all of them have these unique takes on who they are, and you see it in their clothing. It was just so fun.
Danny is such a collaborative showrunner. He’s an incredible person to work with—very involved, and he really likes to push things, and give you the creative range to do what you want.
Conceptually—in the script, acting, direction, and visually, like in the costumes—the show strikes a balance between absurdity and realism.
Totally. And when you’re doing these illustrations and coming up with these ideas, it’s like you’re pitching them. And I love Danny, I’m such a huge fan. I was really like, “Oh, my God is he going to hate me?” Coming in after two seasons, you have to prove yourself a little bit. The actors need to trust you; the directors need to trust you. I’m sure you can tell from my costumes that I really like to push it. I think that is a nod to Danny, in the way that he wants it to be based in reality, and where they would find this stuff and why they’re wearing it.
Like with Kelvin, we could really pivot and change his wardrobe. We go from Christian rock youth minister and you think, what comes next? Hype priest.
Smut busters.
Exactly, Smut Busters. Richard Wright, our production designer, and I were throwing around ideas. Initially in the script it was a more simplistic look, the T-shirts and all that. But I was like, “Fuck it, man.” I wanted to do Zubaz and socks and velcro shoes and doodles all over the velcro. It was really a nod to Double Dare.
It reminded me so much of the programming I grew up with in the ’90s on Nickelodeon, and then also some of the stuff we were being fed at school—say no to drug campaigns and things like that. It felt like he was returning to the aesthetic he might have grown up with.