JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Each week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big life question. For Danny McBride, success in Hollywood has taken patience, hard work and a little bit of delusion, which is also present in his onscreen characters and in his new book of short stories. It's called "Thrilling Tales Of Modern Men."
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DANNY MCBRIDE: I think there's nothing funnier than somebody who's, like, full of hot air in - or somebody who just has, like, an insane ego, and then it's completely obvious to everyone around them that, you know, they don't have the goods.
SUMMERS: McBride spoke with Wild Card host Rachel Martin about choosing to live and work in South Carolina.
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RACHEL MARTIN: When have you felt the most homesick?
MCBRIDE: Two different points in my life - I definitely would feel homesick when I first moved out to LA. Like, I feel like when things weren't going - that's a city that when things aren't going your way, it's almost like everything isn't going your way, you know?
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCBRIDE: Like, that's when you get the parking tickets. That's when you get. Like, it just feels like the whole city's...
MARTIN: It piles on.
MCBRIDE: ...Against you. Yeah, I started romanticizing the South then because I think I - you know, growing up in the South, there was a part of me that was always, like, ready to get out of there.
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCBRIDE: And then once I was in a big city, I was suddenly like, oh, I kind of miss those country roads, and I miss how easy that was. And then I think maybe in my adult life, where I felt the most homesick was, I did "Alien: Covenant" that Ridley Scott directed, and it was shot down in Australia. And, you know, I have two children. I - my wife - we had just had our second child, my daughter, Peanut. You know, they were going to come to Australia and all this stuff, but then it just - I think the long flight spooked my wife.
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCBRIDE: And - so then it was...
MARTIN: It's very far.
MCBRIDE: It's very far. It's so rude how far they made that place.
MARTIN: Oh, my God.
MCBRIDE: (Laughter).
MARTIN: I have friends who moved there in COVID, and I was like, you know what? It's been nice knowing you.
MCBRIDE: Yeah. I'm never going to see you.
MARTIN: No.
MCBRIDE: The time change is so hard. But I had an absolute blast on that movie, but I really had kind of a crisis there, where I'm like...
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCBRIDE: I don't think I want this to be what the rest of my life is.
MARTIN: Right.
MCBRIDE: I don't think I'm going to be one of these dads that's, like, spending all my time alone in hotel rooms, like, you know, FaceTiming my kids and feeling, like, crushed or in some purgatory where I'm, like, missing everything. And so yeah, after that experience - that was in 2016 - that's when I kind of had the idea of, you know, maybe it's time to, like, get out of LA and go live somewhere where I can try to shoot 'cause we had always shot all of our stuff in the South, in North Carolina and - so then, yeah, I moved my family to Charleston, South Carolina, and then we've pushed all of our work since then down there.
And so I've lived there full time, and you know, we shot "The Righteous Gemstones" down there. We shot "Halloween" down there. And yeah, it just became important to me to try to figure out how to do what I want to do and not miss out on all of this really important stuff in life, like being a parent...
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCBRIDE: ...And seeing your kids grow up and...
MARTIN: For sure.
MCBRIDE: You know, I could see how fast it was going, and yeah, I just didn't want to miss any of it.
MARTIN: Yeah. That's a very unglamorous part of that life.
MCBRIDE: Yeah. Totally is.
MARTIN: ...Is lonely hotel rooms and being apart from your family.
MCBRIDE: I mean, It's the lamest. It really is (laughter).
MARTIN: It doesn't sound good. I got to be honest. It does not sound good.
MCBRIDE: Like, oh, this is what it is. I didn't imagine that this was part of the deal (laughter).
MARTIN: Right. How does living in Charleston affect your writing - I imagine it does - and just your imagination?
MCBRIDE: I felt like - honestly, it felt like I had never been more productive. I got there, and the writing really unlocked, and yeah, just the pace of life was just more conducive to the stuff I wanted to do.
MARTIN: You happy?
MCBRIDE: I love it. I love it. I mean, every day - my kids even say it. They're like, I'm so glad we live here. It's like, it's awesome.
MARTIN: Yeah.
MCBRIDE: We have an absolute blast there.
SUMMERS: You can watch the full conversation with Danny McBride on YouTube by searching for NPR Wild Card. His new book, "Thrilling Tales of Modern Men," is out now.
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