Interview – Antony Starr Fan

on June 17, 2023June 17, 2023Gallery Interview News

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?”

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

on July 31, 2022July 31, 2022Gallery Interview Magazine News The Boys

GQ Hype: “The Boys” (June 2022)

_{June 1, 2022}
Via GQ
By Scott Meslow

Of the many trenchant insights in The Boys— Amazon’s violent, brilliant superhero satire, which premieres its third season this week—my favorite is this: In the real world, the line between superheroism and celebrity would be indistinguishable.

None of the show’s many superheroes (who acquired their powers after being randomly injected with a scientifically-developed serum when they were babies) moonlights as a billionaire playboy, or churns out newspaper copy for the Daily Planet. In The Boys, working as a superhero isn’t about being a do-gooder. It’s about netting good coverage for the megacorporation that employs you, whose needs matter much more than, say, saving the world. In the end, super-strength or super-speed are no match for super-capitalism, which is why the show’s “supes,” as they’re known, are always surrounded by a small army of publicists ensuring they stay on message.

The parallels to real-life stardom are not lost on the show’s actual stars. “All these people that we worship, are they really happy? Are they secure? Do they really love each other as much as they do on red carpets?” says Laz Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk, a member of the titular vigilante group that battles the supes.

_{Photographs by Eric Ray Davidson}

No character embodies that tension more completely than Homelander, the superpowered sociopath who serves as the dark heart of The Boys. “Isolation is the natural byproduct of power,” says Antony Starr, the native New Zealander who’s riveting and terrifying in the role. Even Homelander’s fellow superheroes are afraid of him.

And they should be. Homelander is basically Superman, if he didn’t care about truth or justice. He does believe in the American Way, though not as the Man of Steel would define it: Homelander’s pettiness, cruelty, and all-encompassing narcissism makes him a quintessential Ugly American, spewing his insecurities across the globe. He never grows because he can’t. “He can literally fly away from his problems, or laser them away,” says Starr. “And it’s a complete curse, because ultimately [facing your problems] is what forges character.”

NYTimes: Antony Starr Contends With Accountability, Onscreen and Off

_{June 3, 2022
Article by Dave Itzkoff.}

One lesson taught repeatedly by “The Boys,” the superhero series on Amazon Prime Video, is the danger of celebrity: Do not be too worshipful of any public figures, it warns, because you never really know what they’re like behind the scenes.

The show’s most vivid embodiment of this message is the character of Homelander, a seemingly virtuous crime fighter played by Antony Starr. In the eyes of the wider world, Homelander can do no wrong; he is stalwart and honorable, with blond hair, a gleaming smile and a striped, star-spangled cape.

But as viewers of “The Boys” know well, this is all a facade. Beneath these superficialities, Homelander is self-centered, manipulative and cruel.

Actors are not the roles they play, but Starr, 46, a veteran film and TV star from New Zealand who has gained new visibility from “The Boys,” knows exactly what he signed on for.

As he said in an interview recently, “The standard superhero movies that are out there, they’re bound to their moral compass. Even if Superman goes bad, you know he’s coming back to true north because that’s the model.”

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