‘The Boys’ Eric Kripke and Antony Starr on Homelander: ‘He’s the hero of his own story. It’s just a really twisted story.’
One thing that Eric Kripke and Antony Starr share in common? They “both have hard times absorbing compliments.” Kripke is the executive producer-showrunner-director for “The Boys” on Prime Video, and Starr plays villainous superhero Homelander, and they both take turns making each other extremely uncomfortable with praise during Gold Derby’s in-depth chat about Season 4. Watch the video interview above.
Accepting kudos “is a deep-seated damage in both of our lives,” laughs Kripke, who then delves into why Starr is “doing some of the best work on TV right now.” The filmmaker says, “He is in an all-timer list of great antagonists, and he just makes it so real and complicated and weirdly vulnerable at times, and just human. You know, we’ve always said as we’re working on the character together, you don’t have to sympathize, but you do have to empathize. You have to understand where he’s coming from, and why he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s the hero of his own story. It’s just a really twisted story.”
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Starr later turns the tables on Kripke and starts praising his showrunning style. “It’s a phenomenally hard job [because] the number of caps you’ve got to be able to wear is staggering,” the actor declares. “To be able to wear them well is a whole other thing, and I haven’t met anyone who’s got such a complete take on it. Every cap fits perfectly.” He then turns to his boss and says, “I don’t know when you sleep.”
Kripke directed the Season 4 finale, which streamed on July 18. “It’s all challenging, and it’s all fun,” he answers when contemplating which scene was the hardest to direct. One moment that went viral was when Erin Moriarty‘s Starlight had to physically fight a different version of herself. “That particular scene just required an incredible amount of pre-planning and figuring it out,” he recalls. “It’s a team sport, I will say … It was a remarkable performance.”
At the end of our chat, Starr opens up about being “sad” that “The Boys” is ending with Season 5. “I think it’s the right time to end,” he readily admits. “I never want to do what I’ve done on a show that shall not be mentioned, where we came back for the wrong reasons, and it was ugly. We’re gonna go out in a really good place. I’ve seen some of the scripts in Season 5, and it’s off to a rip-roaring start. So we’re gonna go out on top, which I think is great. We know that it’s ending, so we have a chance to really savor it. And for me personally, I’m looking forward to jumping back into it for one last round.”
Also in our interview, Kripke and Starr talk about how the series has “been political from the beginning,” they reflect on Homelander returning to the Vought lab where he was raised and having a “therapy session” by torturing the doctors, and they discuss what new cast members Valorie Curry as Firecracker and Susan Heyward as Sister Sage bring to the show.
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