Just because they’re Emmy nominated doesn’t mean The Boys are pulling their punches.
Here, the team dives into what might be “the most insane season of TV ever filmed.”
The boys are back in town.
Antony Starr, Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, and Jensen Ackles.Gina Gizella Manning for Entertainment Weekly
The guys haven’t been in the same room together since makingThe Boysseason 3 in Canada the previous September.
Red and green lights illuminate a tar-and-feathered hotel room torn asunder.
Silently, he holds out his outstretched arm, waiting for someone to grab the saucer.
Antony Starr, Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, and Jensen Ackles.Gina Gizella Manning for Entertainment Weekly
After three seasons playing the vigilante, Urban knows when something’s not right.
“Look at this whole wrecked place,” he finally says.
“Butcher wouldn’t have a saucer.”
Jensen Ackles joins up with Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, and Karl Urban for EW’s ‘The Boys’ season 3 cover shoot.Gina Gizella Manning for Entertainment Weekly
The subversive show hasn’t just won over fans, but the industry too.
“A lot of people would think that our show is inappropriate.
To me, it’s inappropriate in all the right ways,” Fukuhara says.
Still,The Boyswill beThe Boys, awards recognition or none.
(The Emmys aired that clip as part ofThe Boys' Best Drama nomination announcement during a July livestream.
Quaid found it “most appropriate.")
And Fukuhara says season 3 “will make that whole whale sequence look like a piece of cake.”
Reading the scripts, she didn’t know how they were going to pull off some of the material.
I don’t know how we did it, but hopefully it’s allowed to air.”
Now, “everything ismostlyunder control,” Kripke hints.
Butcher, meanwhile, feels like he’s being kept on a tight leash.
“So, he decides to take matters into his own hands.”
“The result changes the course of everything,” Urban adds.
“It leads to unexpected alliances and conflicts between characters that historically get along.”
A few ideas were bobbing around the writers' room when they mapped out the season 3 arc.
The show leans into that idea in part through Soldier Boy.
“It doesn’t go well,” Kripke teases.
Soldier Boy led the first team of heroes who were operating during World War II.
Known as Payback, Kripke describes them as the Seven before the Seven.
“They were the biggest stars in the world at one time,” he adds.
But Soldier Boy, really, is a piece of work.
From Supernatural to supe
“It’s Captain America on his a–,” says Ackles.
“It’s as if Captain America gave up superheroism and was just your drunk and inappropriate uncle.”
“We’re trying to call attention to what bulls— that is.”
Still, Kripke managed to push the actor to the edge.
I didn’t know where my line was, but you found it."
Not that he found the situation funny.
It was more the thought that maybe they had finally pushed the TV limits too far.
It’s dump the cast has a lot of faith in Kripke’s vision.
At least, that’s what they tell the public.
Instead, they secretly fly to a remote island and have a weeklong orgy.
There’s still going to be lots of nudity.
Executive producer Paul Grellong was actually on location for “Herogasm” with the episode’s director Nelson Crowd.
“By Day 2, they’re all naked mole rats and you just want to get outside.”
In some ways, “Herogasm” is reflective of how far the show has come.
“There was no way we could have sold that pitch the first season.”
In his defense, he did fully realize a closeted religious supe getting into a four-gy at a nightclub.
“We definitely have more permission to go nuts,” Quaid agrees.
“I feel like every season we reset what the ceiling is, and somehow we push through it.
Fukuhara adds, “Hopefully, the Television Academy will accept us again.
We’ll see.”
If not the Emmys, the fans will.
