Walton Goggins’ Lee Russell in HBO’s Vice Principals is his darkest TV role

Collider writer Liam Gaughan argues that Walton Goggins delivers his nastiest, most repulsive television performance as Lee Russell in HBO’s short‑lived, two‑season dark comedy Vice Principals. Goggins is already known for playing dark characters — from the corrupt cop Shane in The Shield to the enigmatic “Ghoul” in Fallout — but Gaughan says he’s never been nastier than as Russell, a role that proved Goggins one of Danny McBride’s most valuable collaborators.

Vice Principals is staged like a political thriller inside the administration of a California high school. Goggins plays Lee Russell, the slimy vice principal of curriculum who is blindsided when the school board names Dr. Belinda Brown (Kimberly Hébert Gregory) principal, passing him over for promotion.

McBride, who co‑created the series with Jody Hill, co‑stars as Neal Gamby, the vice principal of discipline who’d also expected the job. Gaughan says the show builds its comedy by leaning into the spite of two selfish, cruel characters. Gamby gets some sympathy as a father trying to win respect, but Russell is portrayed as having no affinity for education or children and as an inattentive husband.

The Season 2 episode “A Compassionate Man,” directed by David Gordon Green, examines Russell’s conduct and why he can’t form friendships. The series escalates its characters’ spite into outright criminality, and Gaughan praises Vice Principals as a brave, ambitious comedy that forces its leads into darker territory.

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