Fans hoped to see Antony Starr nominated for an Emmy since he first appeared as Homelander in ‘The Boys.’ But Starr made it clear in a recent chat with Rolling Stone that he didn’t care about awards:
“I’m not worried about it, man. As I’ve gotten older, my ambitions have changed. And I realize the mechanics behind those things, the politics and all of that. And I think, good luck to everyone, but yeah, that’s not what drives me.”
The show did receive Primetime Emmy Awards nominations in 2020 but for the Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series categories.
Starr won awards for Best Actor at the Critics Choice Super Awards in 2021 and 2023. He also received a nomination for Best Actor in a Streaming Series in 2022’s Saturn Awards.
Homelander’s Link To The Real Life
The actor also touched on the link between his villain and the real-life political figures like Donald Trump during the recent chat:
“It’s interesting because that came up a lot. For me, it’s a bit of a red herring because if we strictly stayed in that lane, the character would be one- or two-dimensional, and we wanted to create something a bit more layered than that. We wanted more than a cardboard cutout. It’s the same way that you could look at it like Superman and just go bad.”
Homelander went on trial in Season 4’s first episode in the election year, which mimicked Trump’s case. Still, Starr continued:
“But let me put it this way. Whatever parallels there are to the real world, it has to be driven by our characters. The narrative has to be driven by the needs of the character. So yeah, obviously, there’s an election in the show, and there’s a real election this year. But that’s actually a really natural progression from Homelander’s perspective, because we’ve been dabbling in politics and trying to get in the military from Season 1.”
The Showrunner Didn’t Create Starr’s Character For ‘Incels’
‘The Boys’ didn’t shy away from including political and social issues in its episodes since Season 1. Showrunner Eric Kripke criticized those complaining about this by telling them to ‘watch something else.’ He also commented on people rooting for Homelander in an interview with Variety:
“I have to believe that the ‘bad fans’ are a very small minority. Because I don’t know how you root for Homelander. When the guy is slurping up breast milk, and being the weakest character in the show over and over and over again and being like – he’s not even particularly macho. He’s weird. He’s weird and thin-skinned, and I don’t know how you look at that guy and you’re like, ‘That’s my guy.’”
The writer added:
“Part of it just comes from the practical considerations of, hey, I want a really big tent, and I don’t want to do some edgelord thing. I don’t want to make edgelord material for incels, or whatever. I want something for everybody. And so I was like, we really need to muscle up the female characters.”
‘The Boys’ is streaming on Prime Video.
