Fans are startled by the way The Boys star weaves absurdist melancholy into even the most shocking and meme-worthy sequences, even if he frequently finds himself at the heart of them.

THE BOYS ISN’T EXACTLY known for its subtlety. The hit Prime Video show is, after all, a subversive take on the superhero genre whose “heroes”—and those scare quotes are doing some super-human heavy lifting there—routinely do much more damage than good. Heads explode, people explode, whales explode; the current third season opens with a penis exploding when an incredible shrinking hero (let’s call him an “Ant-ish Man”) crawls into his lover’s urethra, sneezes, and accidentally bursts back to his normal size. And if that wasn’t enough, fans of the original comic series by Garth Ennis eagerly anticipated the show’s latest episode when they recognized that it shares its title, “Herogasm,” with that of an infamous arc from the comics. The episode’s set piece is a secret suped-up orgy. “These violent delights have violent ends,” Shakespeare once wrote. He would have been eaten alive at Herogasm, probably literally.

What’s your reaction every time you get a new script for The Boys?

I call my therapist. [laughs] I always say that it’s like going through the seven stages of grief. First you’re in denial, then you’re bargaining, and eventually you accept it. But I remember reading the first 20 pages of the first episode of this season and thinking, “How are they gonna do that?” And they pulled it off. I always think I know where my storyline may go, and it’s never that. It’s always something completely ridiculous. And this season has been a lot of that. Before this season, Kripke asked me, “Have you seen My Octopus Teacher? Did you see that documentary?” And I was like, “I did. It was very touching, very moving. I doubt that’s where you’re going to go with it!”

I’m still haunted by the scene earlier this season of the Deep muttering “He’s praying!” while being forced to eat his friend Timothy the Octopus alive. How did you get through shooting that?

Stephan [Szpak-Fleet], our VFX supervisor, is incredible. When I saw it in the episode, I was like, “Oh my god, it looks disgusting!” Because there was really nothing much on the plate when we shot it. It was almost like a mochi filled with syrup. It kind of ruined pancakes for me for a minute. And they just attached some scotch tape with strings to my face, and kind of pulled on my face a little bit. It was very analog. And then they added all the VFX and it looks so amazing. I mean, our VFX team was nominated for an Emmy last year, and you can see why.

What’s even funnier, though, is that I just got an email the other day that PETA gave us an award! [laughs] They gave it to me, Kripke, and the VFX team for not using a live octopus in the scene! It’s actually amazing…but it’s also funny. And it does take an immense amount of work! Stephan and the team go through scenes frame by frame to do shit like that, to make sure those special effects are amazing. On a show like ours, that stuff really is make-or-break. You can tell when things look half-assed, and our effects are cinema quality.

“Every time you ran into somebody, it would be like hearing war stories. People coming back from a scene like, ‘Have you been to set yet?'”

Well, you’d need some major cinema quality VFX to open the season with a man crawling through a urethra.

Yeah, as our viewership goes up, more money’s coming in, and we can create these big set pieces. And that was a big set piece…quite literally!

The most recent episode includes a superhero orgy called “Herogasm,” inspired by a famously debauched arc from the original comics. And the show’s adaptation did not disappoint. What was it like shooting those scenes?

Oh man, it felt like we were shooting it for like a month. And every time you ran into somebody, it would be like hearing war stories. People coming back from a scene like, “Have you been to set yet?” Crew members standing outside the studio just ripping cigarettes, never smoked a day in their life, muttering, “The things I’ve seen….” The editors who were getting the dailies would be saying, “This is some crazy shit!” But our scenes were pretty sectioned off—when I was shooting my stuff, I didn’t really get see all the other scenes with the other actors. So you walk onto set and there are mysterious fluids everywhere and you don’t know what’s been happening. One of the funniest stories was that we still had all the usual COVID protocols, so people would go to get a pump of hand sanitizer and then realize, “Ugh, this is lube!”

And I don’t know where they found these extras, but they were all super cool, and it helped normalize things and make everyone more comfortable on set after a minute in there, you know? Especially for Jack [Quaid], who was the most disrobed he’s ever been.

Have you ever had a moment while filming where you though, “I don’t know if I can do this”?

Well, Kripke’s amazing. His door is always open, he always emails you right back, he’ll always get on the phone. And I rarely bother anybody! But I did have one scene this episode that made me wake up at night in a panic. The next morning I was like, “I need to know what all the camera angles are. What are we doing? Can we not do this shot? How will I sleep at night?” And Kripke started laughing and said, “We’re never gonna make you do anything you don’t want to do, so let’s talk about this.” So that was the only one of those emotional breakdowns I had.