When Eastbound & Down debuted I thought I’d check it out not anticipating much more than a mildly entertaining half hour. The Will Ferrel and Danny McBride comedy combo was really impressive. It’s one of the funniest shows in the last few years and not only that, the arguably shallow-humoured show left me emotional at the end of their six episode season.
Now, Eastbound & Down is available for you through their Season One DVD as well as a Men.Style interview with Danny McBride on living life as Kenny Powers. Check it one time:
Hey! Kenny Powers! Fuck you!
Ha, ha, yeah. Greetings from Belfast.
Do you get that a lot? People talking to you as if you are, in fact, Kenny Powers?
Well, I do get a lot of shots thrown my way in bars, these days—people yelling, “Hey! Kenny!” I figure it comes with the territory, because I play Kenny on the show, and I also write the show, so people assume we must be the same person, more or less. I’m cool with that. I mean, I’ve dedicated so much of myself to getting that fucking thing on the air, it’s flattering when I get some recognition. If people are still yelling “Hey, fuck you, Kenny Powers!” at me in five years, maybe I’ll feel different.
Is there stuff you put on, on the Eastbound set, that immediately gets you into Kenny Powers mode?
Those shirts are one thing. That was a big focus for us, putting together the costumes—you know, things like big V-necks with lots of breathability. That’s not anything I wear. And for me, there’s a lot of Kenny in the hair—like, when he’s in celebrity mode, he slicks it back. The costumes and the hair and all that, that stuff is actually pretty key for him as a character, because with Kenny, when he has big mental changes, it starts from the outside. You know he’s in trouble any time he’s got that all-black look going on.
How so?
You know, it’s him getting all “man in black,” trying to put on this rock-star attitude, that sets him back. The moment he got so consumed with this image of himself as a famous person, Mr. Not-To-Be-Fucked-With, that was when he lost his fastball. I think you see that a lot—when a person stops focusing on whatever it was that made him famous and starts thinking too much about just being famous, it’s all downhill. Kenny’s definitely absorbed in all the trappings.
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