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Sun 23 August 2026 0:30, UK
While Walton Goggins sounds like a name out of a children’s book, it refers to one of the most compelling actors working today.
In both comedy and drama, he always delivers, as evident from his collaborations with top directors like Quentin Tarantino, and in recent years, he has become one of the most dependable TV actors in the world. While the likes of Fallout and The White Lotus have taken the Alabama-born character actor to new heights and earned him a myriad of award nonimations, you could argue that his golden run began with The Righteous Gemstones.
A 2019 HBO show, The Righteous Gemstones follows a group of televangelists as their faith and relationships are pushed to their limits, and sees Goggins as Baby Billy Freeman, a lying and manipulating former child star who has fallen on hard times as an adult, playing a major role in the first season of the show, before becoming a recurring character for the remainder of its run.
The show was created by Danny McBride, which explains why Goggins was cast, as the two go way back as friends as well as collaborators. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Goggins spoke very highly of McBride, explaining that, at some points, he was even scared of him.
“I was so unbelievably intimidated by the prospect of playing with Danny in that kind of way because he’s so good at improvising and he’s so good at his own material,” he revealed, “I desperately didn’t want to let him down; when you’re playing with a giant in that way, you want to put the ball back over the net consistently.”
The show he’s referring to is Vice Principals, which starred the duo as two high school teachers with conflicting ambitions of becoming principal. When the incumbent head steps down and brings in an outsider (played by the late Kimberly Hébert Gregory) to replace him, the two conspire to bring her down by any means necessary.
“These are bucking broncos, man,” Goggins said of his character, Lee Russell, and McBride’s character, Neal Gamby, “They are heightened but grounded; they’re both deeply flawed human beings”.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
Vice Principals only ran for two seasons, but it made quite an impact in its short life, its 2016 first season receiving middling reviews, but the second one blew people’s socks off and still sits with a perfect score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. The show was largely ignored by critics, receiving just one Emmy nomination for ‘Best Sound Editing’, while Goggins was named ‘Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series’ at the Critics’ Choice Television Awards, though, which is something.
Goggins has been very vocal in support of McBride, often referring to him as one of the most overlooked actors of his time, and even though they haven’t collaborated in some time, let’s hope it’s not too long until we see them back together again.
