Tim Baltz on the Monkey, Series Finale

Watching HBO‘s The Righteous Gemstones over four seasons, nobody can argue that many characters —each of them members of a self-serving family of megachurch moguls — have experienced a great deal of personal growth. Creator and star Danny McBride is the first to admit that they’re all devious scoundrels. But amidst all of that moral bankruptcy, at least one of the lot has emerged with their integrity intact.

Tim Baltz’s tenure playing BJ has seen him brawl with a naked man, suffer a catastrophic spill during a pole dance and in these final episodes, apparently french kiss a monkey. But all that has only fortified a character who went from hapless brother-in-law to inarguably the most evolved one of the bunch. “They see him as pathetic, yet he’s the person who retains his values throughout,” says Baltz. “The tension in his life is that he’s behaving better than all the other characters, yet he still wants their approval. I think, by the end, he’s content to just be himself. It’s OK if he’s never quite going to fit in.”

With only two episodes left before the Gemstones sing their final hedonistic hymn on the May 4 series finale, Baltz zoomed in from the North Carolina shoot of an upcoming Bobby Farrelly movie to talk about his alter ego’s colorful arc. The Second City alum, who stars in recent Hulu debut Deli Boys, also discussed the lowlights of mingling with MAGA supporters while making Comedy Central’s The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, the wardrobe tweak that helped him book more jobs and the impression that derailed his Saturday Night Live audition.

From the season’s trailer, and the way things are headed, it looks like you kiss BJ’s service monkey at some point.

I didn’t know if this is a spoiler, but I did have to french a capuchin monkey. A capuchin monkey kisses with its tongue. No matter how tightly you hold your lips, he’s going to stick his tongue through them and into your mouth. The trainer warned me this and I was like, “Yeah, OK, I think I’ll be able to keep my lips shut.” Nope, forced his tongue right into my mouth.

PETA is waging a PR campaign against Danny McBride for casting the monkey. Can you attest to the animal’s wellbeing?

Everything was above board. And the trainer was very good about it. The only problem was that to train the monkey to do the next action, the trainer would kiss the monkey first. So the monkey was sticking his tongue in the trainer’s mouth and then coming over and doing it to me. I basically kissed the trainer.

The arc of this show coincides with so much tumult in Hollywood. It’s only been four seasons, but you aired the first season before the pandemic. There were the strikes, all of that, and you knew you had a job through all of it. How are you approaching the end of stability?

We were so blissfully unaware of a lot of things, so it’s odd to have been in a stable position through all that turbulence. I started thinking about the end during season three, to be honest. Because I’d been working on The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, as a correspondent, before this. That was probably the hardest job that I’ve ever done, all that fieldwork. I was still there when I booked Gemstones. The very next day, at the morning meeting, Jordan told us that the show was canceled. So I went right from one show to another. I slowly regained my endurance for the work, so around season three, I started to jump back into my own development in order to prepare for the eventuality. Because I want to be number one on the call sheet. I love being any part of the call sheet. Working is fun. And I come out of Gemstones much more well-rounded than when I went into it. How could I not? Look at that cast. You could be asleep and learn something around those people.

Tell me about working on The Opposition. What was the sort of most surreal assignment on a show that was all about taking the piss out the MAGA set.

Going to a Roy Moore rally. I had just lost my father, and he was an incredibly sane person. It was devastating to do this job without the exact person that I’d talk to about what I was going through. Maybe it’s good that I was desensitized at that time? Because it was an element of danger to it, that gig in particular. Steve Bannon was speaking in this barn outside of mobile, QAnon had just become a thing, and there were about 400 people. I begged them to give us security because it felt like there was a lot of kinetic potential for violence. They reluctantly agreed. The security guys gave me all these signals to give if I was in trouble. So we go in there, undercover, as journalists and protesters are getting thrown out. I’m talking to people as they’re talking talking about lynching people. Then this one guy tells me that I look like Eric Trump.

You do not look like Eric Trump.

But I had to be like, “Oh, what a great compliment!” Later I kind of bumped into his side, felt something sharp and I realized he was carrying. I said, “Hey, nice piece. How many people do you think are carrying in here?” He goes, “Oh, at least half.” OK, great, 200 guns in this tiny barn. That encapsulated a lot of that job. I had to just shut off a certain part of my brain. You’d film a whole day and come out of it with a minute and a half’s worth of material.

Between the choreographed naked fight scene in season three and learning to pole dance in season four, you’re at the center of so much of the physical comedy on Gemstones. Was that always the plan or pure coincidence?

It’s odd. My wife and I both came out of Chicago, and she once told me that before we even knew each other, that she thought of me as a physical comedian. I would tend to toss myself around stage quite a bit and get injured every once in a while. But with this show, it really came together. If you look back at the four seasons, I’ve been tased, dropped off of a fence and hit in the face with a chewed up steak. I’ve been shot. I’ve been beat up. I’ve been thrown through a wall. I’ve been attacked by a naked guy. I came in my pants in season one, which I’d completely forgotten about.

So many characters have come in their pants on this show. It’s happened twice in the first half of this season.

It’s really accelerating. We’re approaching the singularity of people coming in their pants.

How much of that pole dancing did you actually do?

I’m still in physical therapy from that. I was being coached by this wonderful woman, Tanya Christopher, who’s actually the president of the US Aerial Federation, and she was like, “You can do this.” She actually got me to do it. The whole thing in episode two, me getting upside down, that was me. Ultimately, I went a little too hard on the pole and I ended up getting golfers elbow.

You’re playing a completely different character on Deli Boys, but BJ is definitely a type. Do you find that the scripts that come your way are for a certain type?

BJ fits into a lineage of how Hollywood saw me when I first got there. Coming from Second City, I felt like I could audition for anything, but I noticed that I was having greater success getting further into the callback process for things that were not in line with how I thought I was being perceived.

What were those roles in line with?

Nerds, no offense. I’d look around at the other people auditioning, notice what they were wearing, who was moving further ahead, how they were approaching it. At one point I was like, fuck it. I’m going to go on a shopping spree. I’m going to dress like these guys. It was just a little experiment, and, bam, I started booking things way more because of a cardigan or a short sleeve button-up that made me look a little more restrained. That was a great lesson in perception.

Your show, Shrink, which you co-created and starred in, aired on Seeso. That was indie TV and the platform barely lasted a year, but the show still bounces around different streaming services. Do you get money when the licensing deal changes hands or do you just want it out there?

We made it for so little money that it literally doesn’t qualify for residuals. We’ve never made residuals off it. I think a show has to cost at least $25,000 per minute? It’s backwards. It’s still streaming. Give it money. It’s beating the odds! Instead, it’s the opposite. That was very harsh lesson. 

You recently spoke with Vulture and the interview turned into this whole thing about Timothée Chalamet and your own experience as a French American. Your mother was born in France. Your given name is Timothée. Were you pitched on a Chalamet-centric conversation?

That came out of left field. I thought it was a bit, but [the writer] Jesse David Fox was so inquisitive about it. Next thing you know, we talked for like 45 minutes about Chalamet and I poured out a lot of my life story, which I had never talked about. Most Americans view the French language and French culture as this kind of merit badge to display, and I’ve always found that incredibly gross. So I just keep it to myself, because I love my family and my experience. I’ve spent about two and a half years of my life there. I even played college basketball when I was in France, which was one of the best times of my life.

Another thing that came out in that conversation is that you auditioned for Saturday Night Live in 2012. I love an SNL audition story.

I will preface this by saying a lot of people are going to call “bullshit,” because I really wanted to audition for SNL… but I didn’t know if I wanted to get it. I had a lot of friends that had negative experiences there — negative and positive, obviously. But I slept a lot in my twenties. (Laughs) Everything I heard about the schedule from people returning from the show made it seem like it was not an environment I’d naturally thrive in.

I wouldn’t call it bullshit, because it’s a rare type who could go blindly enthusiastic, no reservations, into a job that famously all-consuming.

There is that tiny percentage of people that are perfectly cut out for it. I started to doubt if I was in that camp. It’s a tough job. Nothing but respect.

So tell me about the audition.

I remember waiting for, I dunno, two hours in this little dressing room. I had a really tight set because I’d just done Just for Laughs. I felt good about that. When I was in the wing, below the bleachers, hearing the guy who went before me… I knew it was the coldest room in the industry, but, man, that guy got nothing. I passed him in the hallway and he looked like a ghost.

Did that trip you up?

No, it sort of steeled my nerves. I didn’t want to be nervous. And in the beginning I didn’t know how it was going. Then I saw the boom mic moving. That’s weird. Then I turned a bit and looked and the boom guy was covering his face in the crook of his arm. He was laughing and that’s why the boom was moving. The camera guy was laughing, too. Now, nobody else was laughing.

What were your impressions?

Harrison Ford, not exactly timely in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg and then I threw in Paul Ryan at the end. I really hated Paul Ryan at the time, and my take intimated that he was discriminatory towards non-white people. I ended with him, throwing it in at the last second, and that is what we would call a mistake. So I did not get SNL, and I was OK with it.. There are so many people I know that would’ve been great on that show. Things happen for a reason.