When heroes are villains
GUESS WHICH WORLD LEADER PROVIDES THE INSPIRATION FOR A KIWI ACTOR’S TAKE ON A LYING, SELF-OBSESSED TV SUPERHERO?
Kiwi actor Antony Starr says it has been strange watching the coronavirus pandemic unfold from his adopted base in the US, as opposed to his homeland.
Starr has been based out of Los Angeles for most of the past four years, starring in TV hits, including four seasons of the action-drama Banshee and acclaimed, subversive superhero series, The Boys.
He’d relocated from his native New Zealand via a stint in Australia, where he appeared in shows including Rush, The Lowdown and the 2012 feature film drama Wish You Were Here, for which he won an AACTA Award.
And whereas the Land of the Long White Cloud has been widely praised for having one of the world’s most effective responses to COVID19, America’s has been chaotic at best, and disastrous at worst, as Starr has seen first-hand from being locked down in LA.
“You couldn’t have a bigger difference in response really, could you?” he says.
And while he readily concedes that the smaller population and geographical isolation made the task of containing coronavirus in
New Zealand easier, he also admits to feeling immense pride from the other side of th the P Pacific ifi f for hi his country’s t ’ much-lauded leader, Jacinda Ardern. “I have been out of the country for most of the last four years but from what I have seen, she has had a lot to deal with, from the mosque shooting to a pandemic,” he says. “There have been a lot of very intense things happen on her watch, and to my way of thinking, she has handled every one with grace and dignity and swift, bold action.
“Everyone at the moment, I think, is looking at her as a true leader and I am actually very proud of my little country for voting her in, and I am hoping they do the same thing again in the upcoming election.”
Leadership has been something Starr has been thinking about a lot, ever since he landed the role of The Homelander in The Boys, a darkly funny, brutal and caustic spin on the superhero genre – as well as a savage takedown of celebrity culture – which made its debut on Amazon Prime last year.
His character, who Starr has described as “an inverted Superman on crack”, is a superhero created in a lab by a greedy, amoral corporation. The Homelander leads a band of equally morally bereft, turbocharged companions, known as The Seven.
Although the graphic novels on which the series is based were released more than a decade ago, and the second series, which drops today, was filmed last year, Starr says it’s “surreal” just how relevant the show has become in the deeply divided and fractious America of 2020. “I think the show works because it’s a twopronged approach,” he says,
“If you want to just be entertained, then you can be thoroughly entertained, but if you want to go a little bit deeper into some of the social references and critiques, then that’s all there for you as well.”
And he says both he and series creator Eric Kripke drew inspiration from America’s highest office for inspiration for his character, as well as other immensely powerful global figures, claiming there’s “a direct correlation with Homelander and vice-versa”.
“There is an obvious parallel with the inverted version of superheroes,” Starr says. “Trump to a certain extent, with certain elements – or Trump-ish sort of figures – there are plenty of them around. But not for everything. Eric references Trump a lot and I go with that 100 per cent but not across the board. because I don’t think there is enough there to go on with Trump, to be honest. He’s too shallow; there’s just not enough there.”
Given the popularity of the superhero genre thanks to the allconquering Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was inevitable that something like The Boys would strike a chord by subverting its conventions, presenting its self-obsessed, murdering, lying costumed characters as anything but heroic.
Starr says he and everyone involved with The Boys are fans of the more traditional superheroes, but he has the feeling that if such beings really existed they would be more like the ones on his show, and that peering into the darker side of humanity creates a whole new world of possibilities in the well-worn genre.
“I do think they are hamstrung by having to be morally upright and our characters, like Homelander, there’s nothing good about them; he’s about as morally bankrupt as you can get,” says Starr with a laugh. “And I think there is something really fun about that – taking the norm and just flipping it on its head. It’s fun to make and it makes it really fun to watch, as well.
“And it’s arguably a more honest reflection of celebrity culture and in a hypothetical world where superheroes were real, it’s probably a more honest picture of what they would be like.”