Best known for his over-the-top pompousness and insensitivity as the washed-up baseball star Kenny Powers in the HBO series Eastbound & Down, McBride acts in a style that might well be characterized as refreshingly offensive.
His redneck ways were nurtured, incidentally, by his upbringing in Virginia and a stint at the North Carolina School of the Arts in my native Winston-Salem. Not that the school is culturally backwards in any way. To the contrary, it's one of the finest theater and arts conservatories in the nation. But its setting amid North Carolina's foothills and down-home customs surely aided McBride in bringing out his inner bumpkin.