UNCUT GEMS(TONES)

Inside the Bonkers ‘Righteous Gemstones’ Naked Fight Scene

Tim Baltz described filming his brawl with a nude Stephen Schneider as both an “out-of-body experience” and also “the most intense thing” he’s ever done.

Tim Baltz has a theory about his The Righteous Gemstones character, Benjamin Jason “BJ” Barnes. He reckons that his tightly wound Disney Adult probably had a lot of “normal” relationships before he met his wife, the bombastic yet deeply insecure megachurch heiress Judy Gemstone (Edi Patterson)—and that when they met, she was “probably the most exciting person that he’d ever been around.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more tolerant husband than BJ, but halfway through the HBO comedy’s third season, things are looking dire. They only got uglier this week, during a bruising (and ridiculous) naked fight scene.

Everyone but BJ knew, until quite recently, that Judy had a dry-humping affair with her touring guitarist, Stephen (Stephen Schneider). The reveal was humiliating. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that this week, after a tutorial on smack talk (and a furious rollerblading session) BJ shows up at Stephen’s place to rain some brass knuckles on him and prove he’s no “cuck.”

As anyone who’s ever laid eyes on BJ could have guessed, this plan does not end well. After a hilarious scene in which Baltz finds a stunning number of ways to butcher the put-down, “How you like me now?”, BJ sneaks into Stephen’s house and finds him masturbating—which should’ve made the job pretty easy. Instead, he gets one punch and one awkward spit-in-the-face maneuver in before a completely nude Stephen springs into “Rambo” action, chasing him through the house and bashing him against every surface in sight. (Also in sight? A bunch of his kids’ toys, and a couple very perplexed little girls who watch their neighbor’s brawl unfold through the window.)

The whole display is breathtakingly ridiculous—the kind of absurd, immaculately choreographed spectacle that The Righteous Gemstones has made its calling card. Baltz described it to The Daily Beast’s Obsessed as both “an out-of-body experience” and the “most intense thing” he’s ever done.

The scene was the show’s final shoot for the season, Baltz said, and actor Schneider had been coming into town periodically for a few months. “Slowly I was like, ‘Let’s get dinner, let’s get to know each other so that we’re comfortable on that day,” Baltz said, “because he was feeling a certain way about being naked.”

Once the day finally arrived, the two had grown comfortable with one another. Still, Baltz said, “It’s really intense. We’re both taking physical blows—and it’s kind of cold out, and we both kind of ended up bleeding for it.”

By the time the two finished, Baltz said, they were both exhausted and proud of what they’d accomplished. He also shouted out his stunt double, T. Ryan Mooney—“the best in the business.”

Misbehavin’ aside, Patterson believes her character’s adoration for her husband is both “undying and unwavering—a for all time, a classic love,” as she recently described it to Obsessed. “I just think Judy really screws up sometimes.”

BJ gives Judy all the attention she so desperately craves, Patterson pointed out. At the same time, “if he isn’t physically there with her while she’s on the road, she’s, in a sense, not getting what she needs.” (Some of us might look inwards or pick up a new hobby faced with such a predicament, but not our Judy.)

Baltz and Patterson’s unpredictable, idiosyncratic chemistry has sizzled for three seasons, and, apparently, it was there during the audition. Both actors come from improv backgrounds (“I can’t speak highly enough to Edi’s skills in that department,” Baltz said) and during their first read together, they abandoned the script partway through. After about 15 minutes of off-the-cuff repartee, Patterson recalled saying, “This is the dude.”

The trust Patterson and Baltz have built allows both actors to take their characters to the absolute limits. As Patterson put it, “I think we both need to feel like we can just run downfield as fast as we can.” That reciprocity also mirrors their characters’ marriage, when they’re at their best.

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Baltz said his character appreciates and accepts his wife for who she is, “because it's pretty clear when you look at the dysfunction of the family, why it would produce people with these types of flaws.” But will they really be able to move on from this one? In a devastating bit of wordplay, the episode ends on a remix of BJ’s most-rehearsed put-down, as a bloodied BJ flatly tells his wife, “I hope you like me now.” Yikes!

“This is the biggest test, right?” Baltz said. “You’ve seen how their union works, despite its own individual dysfunction. And this is the thing that is really going to make them question whether they can overcome something like that—whether it is true love.” Perhaps they should pray on it.

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Laura BradleySenior Entertainment Reporter

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