There are tons of great performances for SAG members to honor this year both on the small and pandemic shrunk big screen. That being said, there is one show, and one performance, in particular, that deserves more hype than it’s received so far. And that’s sort of shocking considering what a massive hit “The Boys” has been for Amazon Prime Video.
Set in an alternate timeline where America’s superheroes, a team known as The Seven, work at the behest of a for-profit corporation, Vought International, “The Boys” not only continued to blow up the tropes of the genre in its second season but touched on contemporary political issues such as racial injustice, celebrity journalism, and the dark underbelly of social media propaganda. Showrunner Erick Kripke makes sure the show sticks to the brazen nature of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s original source material while reminding the viewer that this version of the greater Toronto area, er, the United States, isn’t that far from our own.
The second season of “The Boys” featured an incredible cast including standouts Aya Cash as the not-so progressive Stormfront, Tomer Capon as the increasingly unpredictable Frenchie, Erin Moriarty as the moral beacon Starlight, Karl Urban as the vengeful Billy Butcher, and, to no one’s surprise, Giancarlo Esposito as Vought’s corrupt CEO Stan Edgar. It’s the performance of Antony Starr as Homelander, this world’s seemingly unbeatable Superman, that really turned heads, however.
Effectively a test tube baby, Homelander was raised by scientists to be the ultimate super-powered savior. To say that has affected his moral compass and, at times, is an understatement. He has a disdain for the everyday human beings he soars above he can barely hide. It’s his relationship with his growing son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) that sparks slivers of compassion from the near-godlike hero.
“It’s interesting, because I always [thought] Homelander’s kryptonite if we’re comparing him to Superman, would be his humanity,” Starr says. “I think, more than anyone in the show, Ryan puts him in touch with that, which is a really uncomfortable place for someone as emotionally bankrupt as Homelander. It’s a very uncomfortable position to be in. The level of discomfort, in the beginning, is extreme. It’s really, he’s just looking at Ryan as an extension of himself. Whereas by the end, I think it’s Episode 8, when Ryan is really upset from being out in the world and getting swarmed by people, he really does try and connect with the boy. It is much more selfless, which is a new position for Homelander, again. To me, it’s always been about finding those moments with this character.”
Of course, Starr still makes it clear that he’s playing the bad guy of the show. It’s not about redeeming him. He adds, “It’s just about fleshing him out and finding moments where we can just keep him three dimensional, and make sure that we’re not missing things and becoming too mustache-twirly at any point because that would lead to a slow death of the character, I think.”
After the events of the first season, Starr went into shooting season two knowing Homelander was going to have a rough go at it. Butcher and his rag-tag gang, “The Boys” in question, had made strides at exposing Vought and The Seven for the farce and global danger they truly were. Plus, Butcher discovered that his wife Becca (Shantel VanSanten), was still alive after having been raped by Homelander and giving birth to his aforementioned son.
“Anything that pushes characters into new spaces and keeps the characters evolving rather than just becoming…not a little bit boring, but quite often you see characters that just sort of function and people don’t know where to go with them,” Starr says. “In this case, it wasn’t that at all. Getting to go to work and have a meltdown was pretty good stuff. It was pretty fun.”
The New Zealand native says that from the outset, the premise of the show was to be a more honest take on superheroes, and that allows it to thematically explore the old adage, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He notes, “There’s moral ambiguity in the show. We’re not honor-bound to be a moral north. There’s a bigger range, really, I think, within that. We can go darker, and that enhances the light.”
That window of moral ambiguity lets the cast ground their performances and bring truth to the proceedings. Even when the events on screen seem comedically over-the-top.
“Some of the things are so overt,” Starr says. “We’ve got a guy riding a whale. In Season One we had a dolphin flying through the window, just to look at The Deep [Chace Crawford], for example. But it’s all character-driven choices as well. It’s not a random thing that he happens to be doing. He’s trying to find a purpose, so he’s saving the dolphin. He’s trying to get back into The Seven, so he’s riding the whale. It seems absurd, and there is an absurdity to a lot of things in the show, but they’re grounded and anchored in the wants of the character. I think that makes it much easier for the cast to latch on to that and just treat it with a little bit more sincerity, as opposed to making a gag out of it.”
In a season that saw viewers consider compassion for Homelander following numerous tragedies, it was the more out of the box moments he enjoyed the most. One found Elisabeth Shue reprising her role from the first season as Madelyn Stillwell, Homelander’s former boss and love interest. The twist was that Stillwell was “resurrected” for Homeland’s personal pleasure thanks to a male shapeshifter. A character who then shocked Homelander by transforming himself into the hero for a chance at true narcissistic pleasure.
“Over the course of those two days, it was fascinating, because I’ve never been involved with such a technical setup,” Starr recalls. “When it came to the Homelander on Homelander stuff was more challenging in a different way, because I’ve got to match performance with mine. I did that for six years in New Zealand playing twins [in “Outrageous Fortune”], so it wasn’t new, but there was a couple of new elements that were embroidered on the visual effects side. What the visual effects team was doing with the Madelyn Stillwell changing into Doppelganger, those effects were just mind-boggling. It was just fascinating because we have this really surreal but kind of sickly sweet, funny, twisted, demented little scene going on in this kind of otherworldly cabin.”
Starr adds, “It was a hell of a lot of fun seducing myself. I got to say, that was a hoot.”
“The Boys” is available worldwide on Amazon Prime Video