At the “The Boys” Prime Video FYC panel on May 21, Erin Moriarty (Annie January, ex-superhero Starlight) revealed that she “learned a lot” about sex whilst filming Season 3’s “Herogasm” episode. “It was like walking into an orgy house,” said Moriarty of the set. “Every corner was covered with something.”
The super-orgy held its 70th anniversary in the show’s sixth episode, one plagued by “dildos in shapes that I didn’t think were physically possible that could fit into the human body,” Moriarty tells Variety’s Angelique Jackson. “There were things and shapes that I thought, ‘These would pierce an organ, most people wouldn’t survive them.’ But of course, they exist,” said Moriarty. “I don’t understand, but I learned a lot.”
For Jensen Ackles, who plays the daunting Soldier Boy super-villain hybrid, he candidly remembered being warned about the Herogasm episode when being approached about playing his role. “The source material has it going a little differently,” said Ackles, referring to the notion that his character hooks up with superhero Homelander in the comics. “I didn’t know how verbatim we were going to go, so I was prepared for the worst.”
Ackles’ Soldier Boy wreaks havoc on the super-orgy fighting the American flag-wearing supe Homelander. This massive brawl was performed mostly by the actors themselves. “I think our stunt doubles only got to do one or two gags,” said Ackles.
“We had been rehearsing and doing stunt training for that fight scene for weeks,” said Ackles. “We got to come in on our off days and train and fight; it’s like learning a dance, it’s so heavily choreographed. It may not have been an emotional scene, but it took its toll for sure.”
While the confrontation between the two superheroes was the main plotline for the episode, Ackles remembers “the smell” of the set “the most” while filming.
In what Jessie T. Usher says took “four days” to shoot, Ackles vividly remembers the state of production amidst “Herogasm.” “You looked like you had just come out of war,” Ackles said of Moriarty. “When I saw our camera operator outside, he was just staring at the ground. I went up and said, ‘Hey Liam, what’s up, how’s it going up there?’ And he said, ‘I’ve seen some shit man.’ He was traumatized, and they did not prep me either.”
“I mean, it just smelled like old sex after a while. There was nothing that could have been said to me to prepare for that day,” said Ackles. “There’s some shit that I shot that didn’t even make the final cut and I’m like ‘Really, you made me do that, you knew you weren’t gonna use it, but you made me do that anyway?’”
While the episode encompasses “distracting” moments, Starr affirms that “The Boys” is “all driven by character.” “I do believe the show walks that kind of knife edge, it does straddle those worlds pretty well throughout this episode, and even though there are a lot of distracting things going on, there’s a lot of intense story. The needs of the characters drive the narrative.”
Karen Fukuhara (aka Kimiko Miyashiro) agreed. “Our show is about what someone does with their power, whether it’s political or a superpower, or the effect that someone else can have on another human being.”
A key character arc that comes into play in the season stems from Moriarty’s character resigning her role as super-Starlight — a story that she believes many women in the workplace can connect with in the modern era.
“There’s a very real internal battle that she’s going through that I think a lot of women are going through that work in corporations,” said Moriarty. “They still have underlying misogynistic, systemic issues. [Annie is] trying to figure out whether she’s going to change things internally or externally.”
Upon landing the role of co-captain of The Seven, Annie hopes that she’ll be able to evoke change as a new leadership figure within the group. However, she quickly realizes that this is not the case.
“[In] ‘woke culture’ everyone is a proponent of feminism, the question is really what’s the motive: Is it genuinely to put women in a position of power, or is it to feed into consumerism and is it just exhibitionist feminism?” questioned Moriarty. “I think that [Annie] realizes that it’s all exhibitionist, and the only change she’s going to be able to enact is outside of The Seven.”
Juggling important topics throughout Season 3 of “The Boys” was something that Laz Alonso (aka Mother’s Milk) urged creator Eric Kripke to lean into, specifically touching on the topic of racism.
“There was always [the question of], ‘Who is Mother’s Milk, why is he called Mother’s Milk?’ and to finally have the opportunity to explain the origin story for this man’s trauma was something that was tremendously satisfying, and it was also creatively satisfying for me,” said Alonso.
After Mother’s Milk watched his grandfather get killed by Soldier Boy during his adolescence, his father fought for his justice throughout the duration of his life. However, his overworking nature led to his subsequent death. Mother’s Milk sits down with his daughter Janine by the end of the story to talk about the harsh realities of the world, a conversation that touches on the topic of systemic racism.
“I asked Kripke to have this conversation and find a way to take what’s happening as we have with all the other stories in society right now and infuse it into the show, and he was down with it,” said Alonso.
“Kripke and I were actually talking about his backstory during the George Floyd protests, and that’s when our version of his backstory really came to life,” said Alonso. “I asked Kripke to lean into this: Systemic racism is something that is so traumatic and pervasive in the African American community that it is something that is almost encoded in DNA.”
All episodes of “The Boys” Season 3 are available on Amazon Prime.
Watch the video above for the full conversation.
