Danny McBride plays the antihero on HBO’s “Eastbound and Down,” but what he really loves is playing a straight-up villain in “30 Minutes or Less.” In the film, McBride’s an overgrown layabout living in his dad’s basement. Once his character and that of Nick Swardson get the idea to open a brothel fronting as a tanning salon, they plant a bomb on a stoner pizza delivery boy in order to force him to rob a bank for the cash. Sounds kind of like the work of Kenny Powers, if you ask us. So, we asked him.
This character bears a resemblance to your “Eastbound and Down” character, Kenny Powers. Was that on purpose?
I was told that this character was written for me. So when I read the script, there were things in there that I felt that this was similar to things I’ve done before. You always try to pare back that as much as you can. Honestly, once I was in there with Nick [Swardson], it was a whole new dynamic — and so you just try to follow that.
Do you like playing the villain?
Some of my favorite characters when I was a kid were always the villains in movies, you know, like ‘The Karate Kid,” I always rooted for Cobra Kai weirdly. You know, you love Darth Vader, so it is kind of fun. Even as a writer, it’s fun to write characters that, their moral compass is slightly skewed and you got to figure out a way to get an audience still to root for that person. I think it’s kind of a challenge.
