‘Being you is your superpower’: At TXST, the theatre major began finding her distinctive voice
Before cracking up millions of viewers as the profanity-prone Judy Gemstone in the HBO hit show “The Righteous Gemstones,” Edi Patterson laid the groundwork for her acting career at Texas State University.
When the 1997 graduate thinks back to her time as a theatre major, she remembers the late nights in “the round building in the moat”—aka, the Theatre Center—rehearsing with her friends. She and her classmates spent countless hours honing their chops as they worked on various productions—and possibly experienced a haunting or two.
After graduation, the Texas City native moved to Austin, where she practiced improv comedy at the Hideout Theatre, and later to Los Angeles, where she was a member of the venerable sketch comedy troupe The Groundlings.
Over the years, Patterson has made herself into a sought-after comedic actor. She has appeared on the popular TV shows “Resident Alien,” “We Bare Bears,” “Vice Principals,” “The Last O.G.,” and “Knuckles,” as well as the hit movies Knives Out and Violent Night. Most recently, Patterson and her frequent collaborator Danny McBride scored another comedy hit with “The Righteous Gemstones,” which aired its series finale in May. The comedy-drama show follows the famed Gemstone family, including Patterson as Judy, as they operate their megachurch through greed and crime.
Patterson lives in Los Angeles but occasionally returns to Central Texas, including recently as a panelist at the ATX TV Festival. In 2016, she visited TXST when the TXST College of Fine Arts and Communication named her an Outstanding Alumni and she performed with her Impro Theatre company.
“It has been a blast watching Edi’s career take off,” says John Fleming, dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication. “Two things we stress in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Film are helping artists find their own voice and the power of perseverance. There is no timetable on success. Be yourself and stick with it. And Edi embodies that.”
Patterson says her college experience helped shape her as a performer, all while being present in the moment and learning from her peers.
Naturally, I was always improvising and doing characters for my family. I then forced my cousins and friends to be in my funny horror slasher movies I made. In sixth or seventh grade there was this thing called class day, and me and three other girls wrote our own roles for a dating game parody skit. Three of us played the dudes who the girl was picking to date from. It was very stereotypical in that one of us was a jock, one was a businessman, and I was the nerd with tape on my glasses. We did the skit, and the reaction we got from the audience was revelatory for me. I didn’t know anyone who was an actor in Texas City. Not until then did I realize maybe this could be my job and this is what I wanted to do.
This is not very moving, but real talk, it was the place where I got the most scholarship money. My mom helped me cobble together a bunch of scholarships from having a top ten GPA in school, being in clubs, and writing essays. That’s what we needed. We needed somebody to give me enough money to go to college.
Edi Patterson (left), Kendra Parsons, Courtney Harrell, Christina Piazza, and Christie Insley during their college days at Texas State University (then Southwest Texas) in the 1990s.
When I was there, there was a dude who taught in the acting program named Larry Hovis. He played Carter in “Hogans Heroes” in the ’60s. He taught TV and film acting and was incredible, which was a big deal for us as theatre majors. He just had an easy demeanor and was a chill guy who gave great notes. That class was a favorite for a lot of us.
(Larry Hovis died in 2003, and the School of Theatre, Dance, and Film set up an endowed scholarship in his name.)
The round theatre building in the moat [the Theatre Center] was weirdly magical. So much went on there. You’d fill out rehearsal schedules and might have one at 1 a.m., and it always felt super haunted. We all had stories of weird things going on there.
I remember one night I was rehearsing a play for one of my friends who was a grad student at like 2 a.m. She was sitting in the chairs in the black box theatre up the spiral staircase. She just suddenly started packing up her stuff with a panicky vibe and was like, “It’s time to go. We got to get out of here.” We ran down the spiral staircase and made it outside. She was like, “I don’t know what was happening, but there was either something around you or I could see your aura. It scared me.” There was stuff like that happening constantly.
It was the very beginning of the improv scene in Austin when I got into theatre sports [a form of improv that incorporates competition for dramatic effect]. The Hideout was our space where we ultimately did things, but it was being renovated, so we would have shows and an improv format called Gorilla at the Hyde Park Theater. I did some things with Rude Mechanicals, which tour all over the world, but they originated in Austin. It was a cool scene. To be part of a group with audiences paying to come see us learn how to be improvisers was pretty freaking fun.
I moved to LA around 2000 and was instantly doing improv there. Then I started at The Groundlings. The first few classes there are improv, then you start transitioning into writing sketches. I had to go back to the rules and mechanics. It was hard for my brain at first, but once I got past that, it was all great. I’ll go do the Thursday night shows when I’m in town, which are called “Cooking with Gas.”
Without a doubt it was playing Jen Abbott in “Vice Principals” [which debuted in 2016]. I was doing cool things and working, but that was the first time I really let it rip and showed what I could bring to the table. I felt like I could sort of flex and be my full self.
Yeah, we met at the audition for the show. I didn’t know that he and Jody Hill were going to be there, so it was a trip to walk in and see them there. I left that audition with a good feeling that whether they picked me or not, I knew Danny and Jody liked it, and we had a really good time.
That role was only supposed to be in four episodes in the first season, but we had such fun comedic chemistry that the whole second season changed after filming the first, and Miss Abbott got to come in and pull a fatal attraction.
There was such a magical serendipity, feeling like, “This is exactly where I’m supposed to be and exactly what I’m supposed to be doing with exactly the right people.”
After “Vice Principals,” Danny and I wrote a movie, so we knew we wrote well together. He started forming the idea for Gemstones, and knew he wanted me to play his sister, Judy, in the show. It was all a done deal before the pilot was cast, which was awesome. I love working with Danny, so I had no doubt it was going to be cool. Together, we have a really cool vibe.
It's also nice to not have to go through the rigamarole of auditioning for a job. When I just get an offer for a role, it’s exciting and freeing, especially with having Judy created with me in mind.
I had written a ton of sketches at The Groundlings, and me and my friend Mikey Day had written for a sketch show on Showtime, so I had a little taste of it. This was very different, though. Do you know that saying, “Act as if...”? There was a lot of that for me at the very beginning. Even if I was making a scene way too long, at least I knew it was making everyone laugh. Luckily, I was working with awesome people, so I decided to be a sponge and just learn.
When I’m writing something, I’m always striving for specificity and truth. I want it to make me feel heartbroken or make me laugh until I’m crying. There were so many times I’d be up late at night in the darkness with my laptop just crying because I was laughing so hard. That’s the best.
I plan not to, because Judy is coming with me. She’s in the car with me and will never get left on the side of the road. She’s in me, it’s just whether I turn up the volume on certain aspects or not. I will miss being Judy with those people, though. It was such a magical grouping of people. We had so much fun. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people or a better crew.
Danny and I wrote a cool pilot for “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires” for HBO [based on Grady Hendrix’s 2020 horror novel]. I don’t know if it will come to fruition or not, but it’s a cool project. Even if it doesn’t, we’ll keep making cool things.
I wish there was something I could say, like do this, and then do this, and then do this. On the technical side, there’s really no set path because everyone comes at it differently. Mine was to be an acting major, then do theatre and improv, and then transition into TV and film.
The advice I would give is more esoteric. There’s something that happens when you’re still in school or just graduate and you try to fit what someone has told you what the world wants or what they’re buying. The more you can reject all those notions and dive deep into what makes you specifically weird and awesome, always go toward that. That’s all you’ve got. That’s the only thing that’s ever going to pop for anyone else, and no one else can be you. Being you is your superpower. It doesn’t matter where you are. Keep doing what you want to do artistically and make some fun friends. That—and make sure you have enough money on your meal plan to make it through the end of the month.
