[Credit: Prime Video]
Note: some language and more mature themes in this one.
Having only just wrapped production on Amazon’s The Boys on Friday night, two members from that show hopped on a plane to come to the 15th edition of the Montreal Comiccon to meet fans and partake in a Q&A, as opposed to wallowing in depression in Toronto. Those two wonderfully entertaining gents are none other than Laz Alonso and Tomer Capone, who portray Mother’s Milk and Frenchie, respectively, on the show. Here’s what they had to say, apart from how a trip to Montreal was the best anti-depression medicine they could have at that moment, considering their time on The Boys came to an end mere hours earlier.
Tomer Capone would open up the conversation, citing how quite often, he’s seen and heard from other productions about all the drama on the set between other actors and how there are a lot of forced interactions. But that wasn’t the case on the set of The Boys. All of the cast members really clicked, and they now see each other as friends who go to each other’s birthdays and hang out willingly outside of work hours, something he considered to be a huge blessing both for the show and for him as a person. Laz would add to this, saying that despite how dark and fucked up The Boys gets, they still had this positive quirky energy between takes and on down time. When asked what would be missed most from The Boys, both easily said the camaraderie between the cast. Jack Quiad was the resident DJ for the cast, while Tomer would play backgammon with the cast/crew all the time. Much like me in real life, Laz was the one scrolling through the news and updating everyone on all the “fucked up things” going on in the world. There was also a lot of pranks and banter, including when Laz ordered a bunch of florescent penis stickers and stuck them onto everyone’s car pressure gauge, which naturally went unnoticed by the cast for months due to its location. But once they were noticed, they couldn’t unsee them. Laz even went one step further and made sure that each “set” of sticks corresponded to each actor’s gaffer tape (used for their shots on set to know their positions relative to the camera). But both mentioned how their time on the show reflected the longest they’ve played the same character in their career, so it’s surreal to put that behind them now. But both are open to doing any potential Frenchie/M.M. spinoff, so who knows! If they ever do that, though, they hope it would be set between seasons one and two, when they were still butting heads.
[Credit: Prime Video]
Tomer would pivot to talk about The Boys’ place in the superhero landscape, how the show came out right after or adjacent to all the massive projects within the genre, and superhero films were beginning to enter that “samey” phase we’ve been seeing for a few years now. So when The Boys started, which was based on a relatively obscure comic, it was seen as very refreshing considering the state of superhero films at the time. It was violent, weird, and profane. “Cursing and coming” is how Laz would describe the show. In fact, he was told by Amazon’s higher ups that there was too much swearing on the show, and Laz would later go on to tell Eric “Kripke, the showrunner of the series, that there was too many MFs for Mother’s Milk; “we don’t speak like that!” he quipped, in reference to black males from Harlem.
[Credit: Prime Video]
Tomer hopes that the ending for The Boys is a bittersweet moment for both some of the characters on the show, as well as for the fans, but to lighten up the tone, confirms that his favourite character on the show is indeed Kimiko, stating that she’s the best regardless of him being Frenchie. Laz would state that Billy is his favourite character and that studying Karl Urban’s acting for five seasons has made him a better actor. In particular, he’s a fan of how Urban tends to end his life delivery by filling up his face in the shot, so his character really ends up dominating the space. In a moment of levity, he then says he didn’t know that Mother’s Milk French dub name was La Crème, but fully admits to being covered in lots of crème in season three of The Boys, a nod to Herogasm if I ever heard one.
[Credit: Prime Video]
When asked about the WTF moments on the show and their reactions to reading the scripts, both easily admitted to reading over the pages and reacting with “what!” in terms how how messed up the show can get. And when things get particularly hairy, it’s so easy to think that those moments will be shot exclusively with CGI or a green screen. Not always the case, just like when a 55-foot animatronic whale was delivered to set and the actors ended up being covered in fake blood and guts for a certain. Under the scorching Toronto sun, the flies, mosquitoes and bees swarmed the actors, thanks to the corn syrup blood. The giant 6th penis from the opener of season three was also, apparently, practical, and took a dedicated actor to climb into that thing that filled the set. Laz gave a huge shout out to the props department and said part of the wildness of the show allowed for some humourous moments on set, such as when walking to a different unit and having an exchange with another actor, who is covered in blood and has a rubber dildo plastered to his face from a fight scenes. Don’t see that every day. Laz also accidentally put his hand in Deep’s gills, not realizing they were actually lubricated with KY Jelly, and called the experience cold and disgusting.
[Credit: Prime Video]
The pair also talk about how great it was that Kripke encouraged improvisation and adaptation on set, which allowed for a much more collaborative experience, as opposed to the come to work and read the lines mindset that so many other shows are said to have. Transculent’s ass bomb was something that Tomer suggested to Kripke in fact! Laz stated that writers are sometimes too focused on the macro elements on a character, where the actors are very micro, so collaborating makes for a great complete picture. He stated that this approach to acting has now spoiled him, and it’s going to be hard to go back to a more rigid and controlled environment on whatever he does next. This approach, he thinks, is part of what made the show such a hit. Tomer has even taken fan feedback and injected it into the show, while Laz has taken suggestions from fans for what t-shirts Mother’s Milk should wear, including artists he wasn’t as familiar with, including the late, great MF Doom.
[Credit: Prime Video]
Laz did mention how much he fought against the random continued rivalry with Love Sausage seemed so much less poetic than the struggle against Soldier Boy in season three, but he eventually got on board. When M.M. is attacked by Love Sausage, Tomer’s first reaction upon seeing his friend being strangled by a rubber penis was to bite into it (“Frenchie, bite it!!”) and try to eat it like corn on the cob, a completely improvised moment that Kripke obviously had to keep in the show for how insane it is. But the actor who played Love Sausage, Derek Johns, is actually from Quebec, and the two actors got along great, despite Laz not being the biggest fan of being choked out by a giant robber dong in the at first, often fighting against it, but learned to love the weirdness of that continued rivalry as it went on. He also joked about how The Deep has the worst superpowers, “tentacle love, ick!”
On the topic of season four, which was more mixed in reception, Laz did mention that they knew they were going to do five seasons in total (despite Tomer’s plea for five seasons and a movie), and as such, season four is largely set up for the grand finale and hopes that season gets better once the full picture is revealed. He also said that in the first three episodes of season five, there’s more blood than in the four previous seasons combined. “Scorched earth”, he said. So stay tuned for some gnarly scenes in the finale season, I think is a safe takeaway.
[Credit: Prime Video]
Unrelated to The Boys, but Laz did touch on his time working with James Cameron on Avatar, likening the director’s willingness to go beyond the script and let the actors do their own thing. Quite often in emotional scenes, the cast would just continue beyond the pages and really make the characters their own and Jim would never yell cut when they did this and would often incorporate those scenes in the final cut. When asked if he would come back to that world, he was coy and said, “Who says I haven’t already? I can’t say anymore!”, perhaps teasing his involvement with Avatar: Fire and Ash.
[Credit: 20th Century Fox]
In a fun little anectore, Tomer revealed that he didn’t really know French when he was hired to play Frenchie, but his natural accent is very similar to a French-sounding accent so he was able to get away with just an accent and a few throwaway words for over two weeks on set, until an actual French crew member revealed his secret. But Tomer has gone on to learn French and speaks it pretty well now. His English was also very rough when starting out on The Boys, so sometimes when Frenchie looks confused in season one, it’s because Tomer didn’t understand the exchange.
Having Tomer and Laz resulted in a very entertaining and engaging panel. If you ever get to chance to sit in on them talking about their craft, I’d definitely recommend it and would for sure go and see them again. Great times, great guys. Thanks for coming to Montreal!
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