10 Behind-the-scenes Facts About ‘The Boys’
10. Jensen Ackles Had to Beg for the Soldier Boy Role
Despite having previously worked with showrunner Eric Kripke for over a decade on Supernatural, Jensen Ackles was not the studio's first choice for the highly coveted role of Soldier Boy in Season 3. Amazon originally wanted an older, massively recognizable A-list movie star for the part. Ackles practically had to beg Kripke to let him audition, recording a very intense tape that proved he could play the deeply toxic, traumatized super-soldier perfectly.
9. Homelander's Muscle Suit Is Actually Cooling
Antony Starr's iconic, eagle-shouldered Homelander suit is incredibly thick and features built-in muscle padding to give him an imposing, superhuman silhouette. To prevent Starr from overheating and passing out under the hot studio lights, the costume department built a complex, high-tech cooling system directly into the suit. Tubes running through the lining pump ice-cold water around his body between takes to keep his core temperature down.
8. It Was Almost a Movie Directed by Adam McKay
Long before Amazon successfully brought the story to streaming, The Boys was trapped in development hell for over a decade as a feature film. In the late 2000s, Anchorman and The Big Short director Adam McKay was officially attached to write and direct the movie adaptation. The studios eventually killed the project, fearing it was far too R-rated, expensive, and controversial to ever succeed at the box office.
7. The Deep's Gills Take Hours to Apply
Whenever Chace Crawford has a shirtless scene showcasing The Deep's highly disturbing, pulsating torso gills, it requires a grueling stint in the makeup chair. The gills are created using highly intricate practical prosthetics that take special effects artists hours to perfectly blend into his skin. The mechanism that makes them realistically flutter and gasp is operated by a crew member using a remote control just off-camera.
6. Karen Fukuhara Invented a Unique Sign Language for the Show
While Kimiko is entirely mute in the television series, her character communicates via an intricate, deeply expressive system of hand gestures with her brother, Kenji, and later Frenchie. Rather than using standard American Sign Language (ASL), actress Karen Fukuhara actively collaborated with an expert sign language builder to create a completely original, proprietary dialect of sign language exclusive to the show. Fukuhara spent weeks structuring the language from scratch so that the movements would feel intensely personal, raw, and rooted in the siblings' specific childhood trauma.
5. Antony Starr Absolutely Hates Flying
Despite playing the most powerful, highly mobile superhero on the planet, Antony Starr deeply despises the physical act of filming Homelander's flight scenes. The wirework requires him to be strapped into incredibly tight, painful harnesses and hoisted high into the air by cranes. Starr has openly admitted that he finds the flying rigs agonizing and frequently begs the directors to find ways for Homelander to simply walk or land quickly.
4. The Fake Blood Attracted Swarms of Wasps
Because The Boys uses an astronomical amount of practical fake blood, the cast frequently found themselves dealing with unintended environmental hazards. The standard recipe for stage blood relies heavily on sugary corn syrup, which acts as a massive magnet for local insects during outdoor shoots. The actors regularly had to sprint away from swarms of wasps and bees that were attracted to their sticky, blood-soaked costumes between takes.
3. The Season 2 Whale Was a Massive Practical Prop
When Butcher famously rams a speedboat directly into the side of a beached sperm whale named Lucy, the production team did not rely entirely on CGI. They constructed a massive, 50-foot-long, 11-foot-tall practical whale puppet equipped with animatronic features. The massive set piece was pumped full of over 150 gallons of sticky, corn-syrup-based fake blood, creating a genuinely horrifying, slippery environment for the actors to climb out of.
2. Black Noir’s Weakness Is Real
In Season 2, the terrifying, silent assassin Black Noir is brutally incapacitated by a single Almond Joy candy bar due to a severe tree-nut allergy. This highly specific weakness was not actually in the original comics; it was written into the script because the actor who plays Noir, Nathan Mitchell, has a severe real-life nut allergy. Karl Urban (Billy Butcher) playfully suggested adding the allergy to the character to humanize the unstoppable killer.
1. Hughie Was Originally Modeled After Simon Pegg
In the original comic book series, artist Darick Robertson specifically drew the character of "Wee" Hughie Campbell to look exactly like British actor Simon Pegg. By the time the television adaptation finally entered production over a decade later, Pegg was too old to play the twenty-something protagonist. As a brilliant nod to the source material, showrunner Eric Kripke cast Pegg to play Hughie’s fiercely protective father instead, while Jack Quaid took on the lead role.
