Danny McBride Is Writing a Short Story Collection to Help Men ‘Eat Sh*t’

From The Foot Fist Way to The Righteous Gemstones, Danny McBride has perfected the art of toxic masculinity. For more than 20 years, he has played some of film and television’s most memorable jerks, and now he’s ready to flip the script. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Eastbound & Down star has penned a new collection of short stories, titled Thrilling Tales of Modern Men, which publisher Random House describes as an effort to explore “the darker afflictions of today’s man, with McBride’s trademark humor and acerbic earnestness.”

The project began to coalesce over the past several years, in between seasons of The Righteous Gemstones, the Emmy-winning televangelist comedy that ran on HBO from 2019 through 2025. 

“Between seasons of writing the Righteous Gemstones, I wrote short fiction to shift gears and tell more stories, even if just for myself,” McBride told The Hollywood Reporter of the origins of the project. “This collection takes place in the spaces men build for themselves when the world moves on without asking their permission.”

But before you think this is some sort of self-help journey, McBride is quick to explain otherwise. “These stories aren’t here to fix men,” he says. “They’re here to watch them spiral out of control, eat sh*t, get back up, and occasionally do something accidentally decent.”

It’s a formula McBride knows well from the indelible characters he has created, many of them in conjunction with HBO, including: Eastbound & Down’s Kenny Powers, Vice Principals’ Neil Gamby, and The Righteous Gemstones’ Jesse Gemstone. 

McBride hinted at his desire to upend the motivations behind the typically toxic characters he has known for. While promoting the final season of The Righteous Gemstones in May, the show’s creator and star told THR that “There is a sense with these guys I’ve played, that they hold on to these old, traditional ideas of masculinity and believe they’re owed something. I like to challenge those concepts.”

Thrilling Tales of Modern Men will be released by Random House on June 26, with an audiobook version narrated by McBride.