Danny McBride’s 10 Most Outrageous Characters, Ranked

Although it took him a few years to break into the mainstream after his festival hit The Foot Fist Way, Danny McBride is now recognized as one of the funniest stars in comedy. He’s one of the few actors to have worked with the Ferrell company, the Stiller company, and the Apatow company – when most comedy stars stick to just one of these camps.

Since breaking out in movies like Hot Rod and Pineapple Express, McBride has been coming up with a lot of his own material, having created three HBO series for himself to star in. Between these shows and his various film projects, McBride has played some truly outrageous characters over the years.

10 Lonnie

Robert Downey, Jr. and Zach Galifianakis are the stars of Due Date, and the movie mostly coasts along on their impeccable chemistry, but Danny McBride plays a memorable supporting role in a scene in which they’re trying to collect some money wired to them by Downey’s character’s wife.

McBride plays Lonnie, the clerk who wants to clock off early to make dinner reservations with his buddies. He gets into an argument with Downey’s character, who mocks his claims of being a war veteran until he emerges from his booth in a wheelchair and kicks his ass.

9 Thadeous

Due to its almost unanimously negative reviews, the stoner medieval fantasy comedy Your Highness is often forgotten about. It’s nowhere near as funny as McBride’s best comedies, but there’s still a lot to enjoy in the movie’s riffs on fantasy tropes.

The movie’s combination of the raunchy sensibility of The 40-Year-Old Virgin with the fantastical aesthetic of The Lord of the Rings doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s a lot of fun.

8 Cody Underwood

Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder is both an incisive satire of Hollywood culture and an explosive, hysterical action comedy in its own right. Danny McBride plays Cody Underwood, the pyrotechnics operator for the film within a film who initially idolizes its subject, war vet Four Leaf Tayback.

While Tugg Speedman and his company of actors unwittingly venture into an active warzone, Cody and Four Leaf are taken hostage by a local warlord. Here, Cody learns that his hero made up everything in his book.

7 Neal Gamby

Danny McBride’s incredible on-screen chemistry with Walton Goggins went a long way in making Vice Principals a must-see comedy. Lasting for just two predetermined seasons, Vice Principals brought McBride’s unfiltered pitch-black comic sensibility to a high school.

Neal Gamby was the perfect role for McBride and has all the hallmarks of a great McBride character: his job as the vice principal in charge of discipline opens doors for McBride’s abrasive comic persona, while his divorce gives the character an underlying vulnerability.

6 Rico Brown

The Lonely Island brought their brand of absurdist humor to the big screen with Hot Rod, the story of a would-be daredevil stuntman who puts on a huge show to raise money to pay for his stepfather’s surgery so he can kick his ass.

Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone star as Rod and his brother, while Danny McBride and Bill Hader give hilarious, unforgettable supporting performances as their buddies.

5 Jesse Gemstone

McBride’s latest HBO series, The Righteous Gemstones, revolves around a family of famous televangelists who do little to hide the corruption and debauchery under the surface of their religious facade.

The patriarch of the Gemstone clan, Eli, is played by John Goodman. McBride plays Jesse, his oldest son, whose secret drug-fueled lifestyle is threatened by a blackmailer in the series premiere.

4 Fred Simmons

The movie that put Danny McBride on Will Ferrell’s radar and led to his big break was The Foot Fist Way, a quirky little indie comedy about a taekwondo instructor whose life starts to fall apart when he finds out his wife has been cheating on him.

The whole movie rests on McBride’s performance as Fred Simmons, leaning into the hysterical cringe of every scene and establishing many of the hallmarks of his comedic persona.

3 Red

After making a cameo appearance as a partygoer in Superbad, Danny McBride was given a larger supporting role in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s next effort as screenwriters, the action-packed stoner comedy hit Pineapple Express.

Rogen stars alongside James Franco as a pothead and his dealer, respectively, who go on the run after the former witnesses a mob murder. McBride plays Franco’s supplier, Red, who escapes certain death all throughout the movie.

2 Kenny Powers

Danny McBride’s first starring role on HBO’s airwaves was Kenny Powers, the former Major League pitcher at the heart of Eastbound & Down. Across the show’s four increasingly zany seasons, Kenny’s character arc evolved a lot.

At first, he moved back to his hometown and became a gym teacher. Then, he ran away to Mexico and made a living as a cockfighter. Then, he moved to Myrtle Beach to pitch in the Minor League, before finally settling down to raise a family (and finding it unbearable).

1 Himself

Ultimately, Danny McBride’s most outrageous character is himself, or rather the amped-up version of himself that he played in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s directorial debut This Is the End. Initially, the fictionalized McBride is just an uninvited party guest who James Franco and his buds are forced to spend the end of the world with.

After he becomes the most difficult housemate in apocalyptic lockdown, he’s kicked out of Franco’s mansion and forced to fend for himself. Later in the movie, it’s revealed that he became the leader of a Satanic cult and made Channing Tatum his sex slave.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
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Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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