‘The Boys’ Antony Starr Breaks Down That Twisted Turn in Homelander and Firecracker’s Relationship (2024)

[Editor's note: The following contains major spoilers for The Boys.]

As Homelander, Antony Starr has spent four seasons on the Prime Video series The Boys participating in all manner of debauchery, from blood-soaked to splattered with breast milk. Add to that mix his desire to succeed at fatherhood while internally warring with his own insecurities and vanity, and it’s an even more dangerous blend that’s proving to be unpredictable. And then, when you add in his master plan to make Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) the new President, it gives terrifying insight as to what could be coming next.

Homelander is absolutely a villain, but he’s also such a fascinating character full of complexity and contradictions. Revisiting his origins and facing his past in Season 4 has provided insight into how he’s ended up the way he is, but it also doesn’t justify his behavior. It’s Starr’s masterfully layered performance that makes otherwise shocking and vile behavior far more than what it appears on the surface and why, in the words of showrunner Eric Kripke, “It’s so long overdue, just give him an Emmy already.”

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Starr talked about how Banshee and a conversation between showrunners led him to The Boys, the unconventional way they make superhero series, co-parenting Homelander with Kripke, why he’s learned to trust the visual effects team, getting to dig so deeply into the origins of his character, whether he has any real connection to actually being John anymore, how strange it felt to take Homelander out of his superhero suit, the strange experience of getting hit with breast milk in the face, and how laying on the couch to breastfeed was a bit like playing a game of Twister.

See Also

‘Banshee’ Creator Jonathan Tropper on Why He Changed the Ending of the Series After Season 310 Best Movies & TV Shows With Antony Starr (Ranked By IMDb)5 Best Antony Starr Roles in Movies and TV ShowsAfter 'The Boys,' Watch This Underrated Antony Starr Crime Series Next

The Boys

TV-MA

Action

Drama

Crime

Comedy

The Boys is a drama series that explores the darker aspects of superhero culture, portraying a world where superheroes abuse their powers rather than use them for good. Centered around a vigilante group aiming to control these corrupt heroes, the series delves into themes of power, corruption, and accountability. The show features a complex narrative with multifaceted characters, offering an unfiltered look at the consequences of unchecked power.

Release Date

July 25, 2019

Creator

Eric Kripke

Cast

Karl Urban , Jack Quaid , Antony Starr , Erin Moriarty , Jessie T. Usher , Laz Alonso , Chace Crawford , Tomer Capone , Karen Fukuhara , Nathan Mitchell , Colby Minifie , Dominique McElligott , Claudia Doumit , Cameron Crovetti , Nneka Elliott , Laila Robins , Shantel VanSanten , Aya Cash , Giancarlo Esposito , Jordana Lajoie , Katy Breier , Matthew Edison , Jim Beaver , Elisabeth Shue , Jensen Ackles , Simon Pegg , Susan Heyward , Valorie Curry , Jeffrey Dean Morgan , Ann Cusack , Nicola Correia Damude , Christian Keyes , Sabrina Saudin , Malcolm Barrett , Liyou Abere , Jennifer Esposito , David Reale , Frances Turner

Seasons

4

Studio

Amazon Studios

Collider: I’m always excited to talk to you about The Boys because there’s so much to talk about, although I wish it was Banshee that we were still talking about.

STARR: Everything has its time.

Antony Starr Was Cast in ‘The Boys’ Thanks to His Work in ‘Banshee’

That’s true. I love The Boys, and if Banshee hadn’t ended, we wouldn’t have this show, or at least you on this show.

STARR: Absolutely. That got me here to do this. Without that, 100%, I wouldn’t have got this. The showrunners talked, and that’s one of the reasons I got it. I’ve never been a fan of auditioning. I find it incredibly hard. I think a lot of actors do. It’s a different skill set to what you’re actually gonna be doing. It’s a completely different equation to what you’re gonna be doing on the set. It takes me a while for things to sediment. Offers are great, but they’re very rare at the moment. But Eric [Kripke], the showrunner of The Boys, talked to my buddy Jonathan [Tropper], who wrote Banshee, and his referral was, “Well, we did a show for four years and he came to my wedding, if that tells you who he is.” And Eric said, “That’s all I need to know.” It was a nice way to get a job.

With all the crazy stuff that goes on in this show, and there’s some really wild stuff in every episode this season, do you ever read a scene and go, “Damn, that’s good, I wish I was in that,” or do you feel like you really do get your fair share of the wild moments?

STARR: I’ve gotta say both. It’s not a conventional way that we make the show. We don’t have read-throughs, we don’t have rehearsals, we just show up and do it. Eric and I go back and forth a lot with my scenes. We’ve got a really great relationship in that respect. We co-parent Homelander. It works out that, by the time we get to set, we’ve put a lot of work into what’s going on in the scenes. The writers are great, as well, of course, but Eric and I workshop my scenes a lot. By the time they get to set, they’re often in a slightly different place to the original scene. That’s the only time, when we get those scripts, that I get to read what everyone else is doing. The things that I get to do, like “Vought on Ice,” are just absurd. I got excited about that, and then we went and shot it. I haven’t seen anything quite like it. I watched the whole thing. They played the whole thing for me, and it was just so funny. It was so good. It has such a bizarre, twisty ending, and it gets so dark. It’s so happy and joyous, and then it just gets so horrible and bleak and dark.

I love being a part of something like that. That’s fun. As the violence and the gore always is in the show, there’s an element of humor throughout, and that makes it more accessible for the audience. But then, I read a scene, like in the beginning of Season 3, with a character called Termite, that goes inside a man and then blows him up. I read that and it’s so absurd that I wanna be a part of it, but I’m also a little scared of it. And then, there’s part of me like, “What the fuck is that? That doesn’t make any sense. That’s not gonna work. That’s way too far.” But I know better now. Every time I’ve thought something was going way too far, I see the end result, and that was the case with that scene. The wizards on our post-production team and our visual effects supervisor, Stephan Fleet, and the gang, do such a great job. Often, it’s not what it’s like on the day, it’s the finished result that I really enjoy seeing. There’s a big chunk in between when I read it, and then I see it. It’s quite a bizarre process, but it’s always surprising and fun, as well.

When It Came to Exploring Homelander’s Origins, Antony Starr Wanted To "Just Let It Rip"

It’s so interesting to see him revisit his origins and go back to where he grew up to essentially burn it all down, even though he only sends one person up in actual flames. What did you enjoy about being able to really get into that more and to really dig into his messed up past? What was that like for you to get to explore? Do you feel there’s anything that really can justify who he is now and the actions he takes in those moments?

STARR: I’ll start with the last bit first. Can you justify those actions? The obvious answer is no, vengeance is not a good thing. But then, if you look at what was being done to the boy, it’s no wonder that the man is such a mess. One thing that we really tried to focus on is the legitimacy of the damage. It feels appropriate to me that this guy would want to return and have it out with the people that abused him and damaged him. When you hear what happened, when he explains the stories of why he’s doing what he’s doing and reliving it, call me old school, but an eye for an eye does come to mind. It’s some really sick shit that they were doing to him. So, I don’t know. I don’t know the right and wrong of it all. As Antony, the actor, I couldn’t see a clean way through it. I also didn’t really wanna answer the questions. I wanted to provide questions.

I said that to Eric, and he was like, “Yeah, cool,” and we ran with that idea and just created a template. I had a sense of different areas that I wanted to explore. When we turned up on the day, there was a solid framework to work within, and then we just let it rip. It’s always fun to do that kind of work, but it’s also a little scary because you don’t know what’s gonna happen. I didn’t know, on the day. I don’t wanna know the answers. I wanna go through it with this character and see what comes out. For example, for the first act of vengeance, he’s feeling upset. He’s going, “That’s not what I wanted to do. This is not meant to be a death trip.” He wants to control himself. He wants to learn from it. There’s a genuine desire to get something out of it for the kid, so he can be the best dad that he can be. That’s always the driving force in those scenes. But then, he gets overcome with the memory, the damage takes over, and he can’t help himself. That’s what I love about this show. What a great couple of days to go to work. There are not many jobs, in my experience, where you’re afforded that much freedom and that much creative input. I, for sure, appreciate that, and I’ll miss that. Eventually, when we do finish, I will miss that. But I’m gonna make the most of it for now.

I can appreciate how well-tailored his vengeance is to the individual. Each one was very specific.

STARR: It’s very specific. The devil’s in the details. That’s what I locked into, about being really specific with the memory, but not specific about the reaction. I wanted to get very, very granular about what happened, and then really just open the gates and see what came out on the day.

We’re so used to seeing Homelander in the suit. Is it weird to do a scene in the regular clothes? Does he have any real connection to actually being John anymore?

STARR: I don’t think so. That was actually a really very surreal beginning because that was one of the first scenes that we did. That was actually the very first scene that Susan Heyward and I did. It was a really interesting thing because she was finding her character and we wanted to play around with that, and I was also finding this new version of Homelander that is John, the regular guy in jeans and t-shirt and a jacket. I was in regular clothes while still being that character. Unless it’s been me naked for some of the more adult content in the previous seasons, I’ve always had that suit on. It’s like an armor. There is definitely something about that. First of all, it dictates how I can move, so there’s a very specific and very rigid allowance to my movement. I’ve never really dissected it, but definitely subconsciously that really shifts gears for me. I’m like, “Okay, I’m in the suit. I’m at work. We’re doing this show with this specific guy.”

And then, you take that away and it’s really quite bizarre. It was one of the first scenes that we shot for Season 4, with a brand-new character and an actor that’s finding her feet as well, and her place and rhythm and way into the show. So, we were both doing it and it was actually really fun, but also weirdly challenging to be out of the suit. It was interesting. Since day one, I remember Eric saying, “We wanna get him out of the suit.” And I was like, “Well, I’m kind of attached to the suit, so let me know how you’re gonna do it,” and the only time they’d done it was for naked moment. So, it was interesting.

Homelander Takes His Breast Milk Obsession to a Whole New Level

Firecracker makes herself useful to Homelander by offering her breast milk to him. There are two moments that really stood out with that, when you get the milk shot in your face, and then when you’re begin cradled by her on the couch. What were those moments like to do? How many times did you have to get the milk, or whatever that was, shot in your face?

STARR: From memory, I think it’s almond milk maybe mixed with a bit of water. I can’t remember specifically what that was. That’s one of my favorite scenes in the whole season. That’s the weirdest scene I think I’ve done. If you look back at the show and you look at some of the things we’ve done, there are some pretty weird, very strange things that have been done. But for me, with that, it was the Oedipal thing and what ended up happening on the day, which is that I get hit with breast milk in the face. It doesn’t look like it’s going very well between Firecracker and Homelander. All of a sudden, there’s this reveal of what she’s done and the loyalty that she shows, and then it becomes basically a love scene. It became this incredibly intimate, emotional moment. And I remember, at the end of the day going, “What the fuck are we doing? What are we doing? This is so bizarre.” I think it was the mix of, first of all, having breast milk shot in my face. That’s weird enough. But then, there was the apology around it, and then emotionally where it went, it was just so twisted. It was so bizarre. It was like a sketch from that show Little Britain, but that’s slapstick comedy and we were playing it for keeps. We were playing a beautiful moment between these two really twisted people. It’s the layers that just made that so bizarre.

After that moment, when she’s craddling you on the couch, did you ever fall off? How did that even work?

STARR: It’s very difficult. The suit looks beautiful, and LJ [Shannon] and her team do a great job of making it look amazing, but the ergonomics have never quite been figured out, given the range of activities that I get up to and what I physically have to do. It’s funny, something as simple as lying down to breastfeed on that couch – I can’t believe I’m saying this, what a bizarre job I have – is very complicated. It’s like playing Twister and Jenga, with the moving parts. You’re like, “Okay, that works. That works. That works. Where’s the camera going?” You have to really strategize every shot, so that we get what the camera needs. Often, the position that I was in felt a little bizarre. It feels like your body is angled in a way that doesn’t feel natural, but the camera reads it. It’s much more technical. It wasn’t until afterwards that I was like, “What have we done today?” During it, there was a sense of, “This is very strange.” It wasn’t until after, walking back to my trailer, where I was going, “What did I do? How did I get here? What’s my life? What am I doing here? How did I become this person that goes to work and breastfeeds? This is bizarre.” If you asked me when I was 20, what I would be doing when I was in my 40s, I would not have answered that I’d be in Toronto breastfeeding on camera.

The Boys is available to stream on Prime Video. Check out the Season 4 trailer:

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