9 A-Listers Who Guest Starred on ‘Eastbound and Down’

With Danny McBride’s HBO comedy hit The Righteous Gemstones finally coming to an end on Sunday, it’s time to take a look at the show that made him famous.

McBride’s breakout series, Eastbound & Down, aired on HBO in 2009. It stars McBride as Kenny Powers, a former MLB pitching phenom who is pushed out of the big leagues and forced to become a PE teacher at his hometown middle school in North Carolina. The series chronicles Kenny’s attempts at making it back to the big leagues, and the several missteps that follow as he repeatedly self-sabotages his efforts every time he finds a potential way back to baseball stardom.

Matthew McConaughey

In season 2, Powers is playing on a minor league team in Mexico, and it’s talent scout Roy McDaniel who notices that the death of Kenny Powers’ baseball talent may have been greatly exaggerated. Over the course of the next two seasons, McConaughey delivers several memorably filthy lines: in his first appearance, he begs Kenny to “suck his dream’s c–k”, and repeats that line in the season 3 finale when he leads the baseball star in a rather explicit version of the Lord’s Prayer. “Thank you, Jesus. Kenny sucked. Kenny stroked. He learned how to breathe through his nose while doing it.”

Will Ferrell

Ashley Schaeffer is perhaps the best character McBride has ever created, a car dealership owner (and series antagonist) who is seemingly obsessed with recreating the mannerisms and look of WWE superstar Ric Flair. So it’s no surprise McBride needed a comedic actor with a titanic wit to properly sell the part, and thank god that Will Ferrell was available. You’ll never hear the words “let the boy watch” the same way again.

Seth Rogen

Rogen’s appearance on Eastbound was short, but extremely memorable. In the season 3 finale, Seth Rogen appears as the star closer for the Texas Rangers. He tries to pick up a woman at a local bar and wins her over with his sensitive side and cliched romantic lines, only to be hit by a bus and instantly killed—leaving room for Kenny Powers to finally get back to the big leagues.

Jason Sudeikis

Before Ted Lasso, Sudeikis had a starring role on another TV sports comedy. In Eastbound, he plays minor-league catcher Shane Gerald. Gerald and Powers quickly become fast friends due to their extreme drug habits and their love of younger women, before Gerald hilariously dies from a cocaine-induced heart attack as Powers dances to Walk Like An Egyptian in the background.

Lily Tomlin

Tomlin plays Tammy Powers, Kenny’s mother, for three episodes of Eastbound. Another short but memorable appearance, Kenny attempts to dump his baby son off on his mother before she convinces him to embrace fatherhood, leading to one of the series’ most memorable lines: “It’s super hard to be Charles in Charge when you’re not f—-ng Scott Baio.”

Adam Scott

In season one, Adam Scott appeared as assistant-to-the-assistant-GM of the Tampa Bay Rays, and offered Kenny Powers a massive contract to return to the MLB in a coke-induced haze. Unfortunately, he didn’t actually have the authority to present Powers with such a deal, leading him to head to Mexico in season 2—where a now-sober Anderson brings along talent scouts to watch Powers pitch in an attempt to make amends.

Sacha Baron Cohen

The comedian known for his roles in Borat and Bruno appeared in the series finale of Eastbound for a particularly memorable cameo. Cohen plays Ronnie Thelman, who owns the sports network that intends to turn Kenny Powers into a star analyst and commentator. A character remarks that seems impossible, but Thelman fires back: he “turned Ellen DeGeneres into a lesbian” to great success. Slimy, sleazy, and one of the biggest douchebags in a series full of them, Thelman shows the audience that there are limits on bad behavior even for Kenny Powers.

Lindsey Lohan & Alexander Skargard

In possibly the most bizarre role for either of them, Lohan and Skarsgard make a small appearance in the series finale of Eastbound as a flash-forward shows how Kenny’s future will play out. Kenny and his wife April go to couples therapy, have kids, move to Santa Fe, April is shot and killed in a street robbery, Kenny becomes a heroin addict, goes to rehab, then meets his adult children (played by Lohan and Skarsgard) and the three of them fly to Africa, where they live out their days. Kenny has a heart attack (in reference to The Godfather) and dies, and his kids burn his body on a pyre then throw his ashes in the ocean. Of course, this is all just revealed to be a movie script by Kenny as he pursues his next wild and wacky business venture. It’s a bizarrely immature and stupid ending for a series that was always all three of those things—so, of course, it was the perfect way to go out.