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Danny McBride, Walton Goggins team up for HBO's 'Vice Principals'

Neal Gamby and Lee Russell are co-workers who need each other but would just as soon have it that the other didn't exist. As played by Danny McBride (“Eastbound & Down,” “Up in the Air”) and Walton Goggins (“Justified,” “The Hateful Eight”), they're co-conspirators and the “Vice Principals” of the title of HBO's new comedy series premiering Sunday, July 17.

When the principal (an irascible Bill Murray in a terrific guest-starring turn) at their suburban high school retires, the two men find themselves next in line for the job. But when it's given to more qualified outsider Dr. Belinda Brown (Kimberly Hebert Gregory, “Devious Maids”), the two former rivals band together and try to take down this interloper.

“I think it starts off as a friendship that's a necessary evil, one that's like, ‘My enemy's enemy is my friend,'” Goggins says. “And slowly over the course of the show (we) really get to know each of them, and one person eggs another person on and they are each other's salvation or each other's condemnation.”

McBride, also a creator and executive producer of the series, describes his character as a guy who generally follows the rules.

“But ... he's passed (over for) an opportunity that he in his gut believes he deserved, and the show becomes about how far he's willing to push his kind of other moral code to get what he thinks he deserves.”

Their maturity level, however, isn't much higher than that of their students. Neal, the vice principal of discipline, is prone to temper tantrums, and he punishes students for the tiniest infractions. Lee, who oversees curriculum, is a schemer. Respectively, they're the brawn and the brains behind the operation to drive Dr. Brown away.

But Dr. Brown is no one's fool. From the outset, she seems to see through their phony geniality and puts on a facade of her own. But what of her agenda?

“Dr. Brown is a force to be reckoned with,” Goggins says.

And then there's pretty blond teacher Amanda (Georgia King, “The New Normal”), whom the macho Neal views as a potential conquest. While the other teachers dislike him and his pedantic ways, she feels a sympathy for him, even telling him point blank what his peers think of him.

Seems there's not a lot Neal can do right. This coup might not go so well.

“He's just this guy who thought life would be one way and he thought if he worked hard and followed the rules he would be given certain things,” McBride says. “And when life doesn't shake out that way, he takes matters into his own hands.”

“Vice Principals”

Premieres at 9:30 p.m. Sunday, July 17, on HBO

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