The cast of Amazon’s The Boys took to New York Comic Con this Friday to share some of their anecdotes from behind the camera. And let me tell you, they are wild. Based on the comic of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, it tells the story of superheroes who abuse their powers and the team of misfit vigilantes who take them down. The show has outrageous moments of action and comedy, but the panel showed that the hijinks aren’t limited to the show itself.
Antony Starr (Homelander), Chase Crawford (The Deep), Erin Moriarty (Starlight), Karen Fukuhara (Kimiko), and Jack Quaid (Hughie) held a retrospective panel looking back on the previous two seasons, and looking forward to the third.
Starting with audition stories, Quaid had the funniest. “I auditioned for Seth Rogen [who was] reading Butcher’s lines,” he explained. The result of the American comedian playing a Cockney SAS member had a disorienting effect on Quaid. “I didn’t know what world I was in.” Thankfully, New Zealand actor Karl Urban would take over for the role in production.
The cast discussed some of the weirder moments of the show including the behind the scenes bizarreness of them and the resulting discourse around them. The moment when Aquaman-inspired supe The Deep gets his gills fingered (yep, that’s right) came up several times. Showrunner Eric Kripke told the cast he’d try to get Helen Mirren to voice the gills, but that was too weird so they had to “settle” for Patton Oswalt. The scene proved memorable, because how a fish-man having his talking gills fingered not be? So memorable, in fact, that Crawford relates that a TSA agent pulled him over at the airport to whisper, “Dude, when you got your gills fingered I felt that.”
But that’s far from the only weird moment off set that occurred. Moriarty actually got a strike during the bowling scene despite being a self professed terrible bowler. In one scene, Hughie plays with a stuffed pig that’s revealed to be the, ahem, “hump toy” of Butcher’s dog. It turns out that it was also the companion of the real dog in real life, which Quaid learned too late. Actor Laz Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk, knew about the dog, but didn’t tell. Probably because when not filming, Quaid and Moriarty make pterodactyl noises, to his annoyance. And Moriarty wants you to know that yes, she actually did sing “You’ll Never Truly Vanish,” the tribute song for invisible superhero Translucent.
Just like the show, the cast did have some wholesome moments as well. In season 2, Fukuhara finally gets to talk as Kamiko via the sign language Kamiko and her brother Kenji came up with. “I was surprised when I was given the ability to communicate,” Fukuhara related. “My sign language coach [Amanda Richer] was lovely. It was a good surprise.” Richer created the language, which is completely different from American Sign Language. Since it’s the special language between the two siblings, it had to be original.
The cast also answered the question of whether actor Nathan Mitchell falls asleep in his costume which conceals his whole body. The answer is yes. “If there’s a moment in season 3 where you see Nathan’s head [bobbing], he’s fully asleep” Moriarty said. Look out for the moment when Starlight taps someone on the shoulder.
Even Starr, who plays the dour and wicked Homelander, is a riot off screen. When asked about his favorite snack during the pandemic, Starr smiled deviously. “Milk. Lots and lots of milk,” he said, to the simultaneous horror and glee of his fellow panelists and the crowd at large.
