Los Angeles Times: Antony Starr puts himself into TV’s most intriguing villain

Via latimes.com
(Photos by Nolwen Cifuentes / For The Times)

Sitting down with Antony Starr, who plays perhaps the most intriguing villain on current television as Homelander on Prime Video’s “The Boys,” is disconcerting. Homelander is an Aryan super-sociopath, a gleaming Mr. America with a license to kill. Starr, human-sized and chummy, sports fashionable chin scruff, one pair of glasses on his face and one hanging on his T-shirt collar; out of his photo-shoot couture and into some shorts, his accent is pure New Zealand. And most of all, he’s so … nice.

You’re waiting for the trap to spring.

He says, “What I didn’t realize was how much of myself I was putting into the role. Obviously, not in terms of flying and lasering …” When it’s pointed out that that’s exactly what somebody who secretly could do those things would say, he gives an actual mwah-ha-ha evil laugh. “But without going into specifics of me, in terms of the emotional stuff, the closer I can make things to myself, the more I can tap into something that’s real.”

In “The Boys,” a sprawling conglomerate with greedy fingers in pies from mainstream media to national defense creates and controls super-people. Homelander and his team are seen as heroes thanks to omnipresent PR, but what they’re really defending isn’t truth or justice so much as rising share price.

“There’s a very strange thing that’s happened with the character, though he is clearly not a good guy. A lot of people have glommed onto him. There’s a weird element out there that actually kind of idolize him. I’ve seen some s— on Twitter and I’m like, ‘Wait, What? You are missing the point entirely!’ ”

The concept of Homelander (or “Homie,” as Starr calls him), the most powerful being known to man, raises the question, “What if Superman were a narcissistic sociopath?”

Read more at ‘The Boys’ actor Antony Starr taps his emotions for Homelander – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

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PHOTOSHOOTS, PORTRAITS & SCANS > By Nolwen Cifuentes / For The Times – June 2023