The first season of Amazon Studios’ hit series The Boys delivered plenty of shocking moments with its story of superheroes run amok, and season 2 promises to take the show’s bloody, raunchy debauchery to a new level.
With season 2 of The Boys premiering September 4, Digital Trends spoke to the cast of the show about their most memorable moments from both the first season and the much-anticipated second season to find out which scenes surprised them the most and made the show just as memorable on their side of the camera.
Although we avoided spoilers for season 2, if you haven’t finished the first season of The Boys yet, take note: The following article reveals plenty of plot details from season 1, so read on at your own peril.
Lasers and love
For Antony Starr, who portrays Homelander, the depraved, Superman-like leader of show’s superhero team The Seven, nearly every on-screen moment in season 1 had a high probability of gory carnage. That trend will continue in season 2, according to the actor, but it wasn’t just the gruesome violence that made a particular scene from the first season stick in his memory.
“There were so many things in this show that made me think, ‘Wow, I never thought I’d be doing this,'” but one in particular was from season 1,” Starr recalled. “There I was, standing opposite my teenage crush, Elisabeth Shue, crying, whilst Eric [Kripke, showrunner] was by the monitors telling me, ‘OK, you’re lasering her eyeballs! You’re lasering … lasering … and now her eyes are melting! … Annnnnnnnnd … You’re done!’
“So, yes, lasering my teenage crush in the head through her eyeballs whilst crying is not something I ever thought I would do,” he laughed.
Body doubles
While crazy scenes are nothing new for the show’s returning cast members, season 2 of The Boys did come with plenty of surprises for newcomer Aya Cash, who plays The Seven’s latest member, Stormfront.
Fresh off the conclusion of her hit comedy series You’re The Worst, Cash quickly learned that unique acting experiences were the norm on The Boys.
“I have done many things on jobs and thought, ‘Wow, I never thought I’d be doing that,’ but with The Boys, it was a daily event,” Cash told Digital Trends. “Something that was cut [from season 2] that I can talk about that, though, is that I never thought I’d wear a merkin.”
And apparently she wasn’t alone in feeling that way.
“I never thought I’d wear a merkin, either,” laughed Starr. “But that scene was cut for me, too.”
And like Cash, working around some complicated, faux body parts provided plenty of memorable moments for actor Chace Crawford, who plays The Seven’s former aquatic superhero, The Deep, in both the first season and season 2.
“Just about every time I open the script, it’s like I go, ‘That’s a first!'” Crawford said. “There’s definitely some of those in season 2, but in season 1, it was nearly every scene.
“When [The Deep] gets assaulted [in season 1] and the tables are turned, that was a crazy moment,” Crawford continued. “The way it was shot, I had prosthetic gills on and a guy was working with my prosthetic torso on top of me, moving the gills, and it was all very surreal. But it all works. It really pays off.”
No powers, no escape
Of course, the crazy moments aren’t limited to just The Boys‘ super-powered characters, with cast members Karl Urban and Jack Quaid — who play The Boys’ leader, Billy Butcher, and its newest member, Hughie Campbell, respectively — both sharing some professional firsts that the series made possible.
Urban, whose career has encompassed plenty of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy projects filled with shocking moments, said The Boys still manages to up the ante for him over and over again.
“[With The Boys], you read a script and sometimes you’re in complete shock,” Urban told Digital Trends. “It’s like, ‘I can’t believe that we are going to try and get away with this.’
“We do things on the show that have never been done in the history of television,” he added. “And maybe it shouldn’t be done. I don’t know. But you know what? I never thought that at any point in my career I would be shooting a scene inside the carcass of a dead sperm whale — but [in season 2], there I was.”
Welcome to the show
That sort of first experience began on the first week for Quaid, whose character often serves as both the audience’s window into the wild world of The Boys and the show’s moral center, too.
Early on in the series, it’s the shocking — and amazingly gory — death of Hughie’s girlfriend, Robin, by out-of-control speedster A-Train (played by Jessie Usher) that first sets him on the path to joining Billy Butcher and The Boys. For Quaid, filming that scene early in the show’s production schedule ended up becoming a sign of things to come for the actor, who has repeatedly found himself covered with a sloppy mix of fake blood and entrails — both human and otherwise — in scenes throughout the first two seasons.
“[The scene with] Robin getting atomized by A-Train was only my second day on set, so it was like, ‘Welcome to the show!'” Quaid recalled . “It was a lot, but it was great.”
As Usher explains it, though, these crazy scenes are all part of the appeal of working on a show like The Boys.
“Oh, man. That is the silver lining of this show: The moments when you’re like, ‘How did I end up here doing this?'” Usher told Digital Trends. “When my parents and I have a conversation about The Boys, I’m always saying, ‘How is this my job?’
“Running through Robin was a thing, but there’s even more of that stuff in season 2,” he laughed. “I honestly can’t wait to see crowds’ reactions to what happens in season 2.”
Season 2 of The Boys premieres September 4 on Amazon Prime Video.
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