Danny McBride is not Kenny Powers.
But the funnyman admits he did sometimes bring the egotistical washed-up pitcher from “Eastbound & Down” home with him.
“I didn’t realize that Kenny Powers was having an effect on my normal life,” McBride tells The Post of his foul-mouthed character. “When we shot the pilot, they gave me real-deal [hair] extensions, the ones you had to keep in. So I guess I brought the hair home originally.
“But Kenny has a certain way of dealing with people and with situations that is not how I deal with situations. When you find yourself telling people to f–k off a bit more, you think, ‘Wow. That’s a little harsh. The guy was just asking if I wanted a refill on my drink.’”
Luckily for McBride and the guy selling him drinks, his newest small-screen incarnation is less abrasive. In “Vice Principals” (which premieres Sunday), the latest HBO dark comedy created by McBride and Jody Hill, he plays Neal Gamby, a straight-laced administrator at Lincoln High who is lacking in self-awareness but not morals. The cringe-worthy story unfolds when the school’s principal (Bill Murray) leaves to care for his sick wife, and Gamby goes to war with power-hungry dandy Lee Russell (Walton Goggins) over who will move up.
“It was a lot easier to play Neal Gamby. I could come home and read my son a bedtime story and not feel like I needed to put on gloves before I touched him,” says the 39-year-old married father of two.
For McBride, his latest role is familiar territory. He plays unlikable humans who read as heroes like a virtuoso.
“That to us is part of what we’re trying to do,” he says. “How can you tell a story and get people to root for the bad guy instead of the typical good guy. I think it’s a weird, backward way of storytelling.”
‘When you find yourself telling people to f–k off a bit more, you think, “Wow. That’s a little harsh.”‘
- Danny McBride
This time, the bad guys are transferred from a baseball field to a faculty room — a place McBride was once paid to frequent years ago. After a fruitless attempt at scoring writing gigs in LA, he moved back to Virginia, where he grew up, and became a substitute teacher.
“It wasn’t making me feel good about myself, so I was putting it out there that I was destined to do more,” McBride says. “But those kids didn’t give a s–t. All they cared about was if I smoked weed and what kind of car I drove. I had a Hyundai Elantra, so they didn’t care about me.”
It also gave him the perspective of an educator — and fodder for “Vice Principals.”
“I grew up on all of those John Hughes ’80s comedies. I always wanted to make something like that,” he says. “So in a weird way, ‘Vice Principals’ is a demented version of that, with adults going through all of the social crises that we see teenagers go through.”
As the star of what some consider smart shows, McBride’s own boob-tube consumption is a lowbrow affair.
“I watch Bravo. When you’re writing [your own shows], you don’t want to come home and invest in a story. I’ve seen more of those shows than I care to admit: ‘The Real Housewives of Atlanta,’ ‘Below Deck,’ ‘Southern Charm.’ I will take one hungover Saturday when there’s a marathon on. And I start watching thinking, ‘Why is the [“Below Deck”] chef being so mean?’ I’m totally invested in all of the storylines.”
One thing he isn’t invested in: social media. He recently joined Instagram after Josh Brolin convinced him to while both were on the set of “The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter” (due in 2017).
“He was like, ‘C’mon, man, stop being an a–hole. You just gotta get on with it,’” says McBride, adding that Brolin had about 8,000 followers. “I signed up, and within two weeks I had gone up to like 9,000. He came in the trailer and was like, ‘9,000 followers, huh?’ He was pissed at me that I beat him.”