‘The Boys’ Stars on Homelander’s Hangup on Aging & The Deep’s Octopus Love

Meaghan Darwish June 14, 2024, 5:59 pm

Cameron Crovetti and Antony Starr in 'The Boys' Season 4 — Prime Video

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Boys Season 4, Episodes 1-3.]

The Boys are back and zanier than ever as Vought’s Seven leader Homelander (Antony Starr) tries to grasp for power amid a major court case at the same time as his son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) is finding where he fits in the Supe world.

All of these stressors are exacerbated by Homelander’s fixation on aging, which is brought into focus within the first few seconds of Season 4. And when it comes to a narcissist, there’s nothing worse than aging, including the “gray pubes” that come with it. As Homelander plucks these unwanted reminders of his fading youth, Sage (Susan Heyward) calls him out on the visual signs of his increasing age that he’s attempted to hide.

“It filters through everything in the season,” Starr tells TV Insider about Homelander’s relationship with aging. “Funnily enough, prior to the season, I was thinking as I’m aging up and going through different parts of my own life, I wanted to add some of that into what was going on for the character. And I was on the verge of calling Eric [Kripke] to talk to him about it. And then I went, ‘You know what? No, I’m not going to be that actor. I’m not going to do that. I’ll just wait.'”

Prime Video

“And then I got the first episode [script], and obviously I wasn’t going to go into the gray pubes thing, but a lot of the things that I wanted to try and get into the scripts were already there, and it was just this bizarre synchronicity,” Starr adds. While the actor jokes that he was a little spooked out over the shared mindset for Homelander’s arc with Kripke, Starr says, “I love that we get to go to those places. It anchors the show and the character in reality and gives it such a good grounding to go to all the wacky and dark places that the characters and the show go to.”

One of those wacky places is in The Deep’s (Chace Crawford) closet, where he’s hidden his octopus love, Ambrosius (voiced by Tilda Swinton). “I knew that Kripke wanted the most prestigious, proper voice, like any Oscar-winning actress that we could find,” Crawford says about finding Ambrosius’ voice. “But on the day it was just a tennis ball and a few X marks and they had a guy reading the lines and he was actually really good. We got in a rhythm.”

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Still, Crawford was thrilled by the final outcome for the screen. “That’s all he has emotionally and physically,” he explains. “That’s his secret [behind the] five different costumes. She’s just there in the back of his closet hiding. The fact that it’s [Tilda Swinton’s] voice opposite The Deep… the fact that she has a sense of humor to come and play with us is just amazing.”

Stay tuned to see what the Supes get up to as Season 4 continues on Prime Video, and let us know what you think of the latest chapter so far in the comments section, below.

The Boys, Season 4, Thursdays, Prime Video