CS Interview: Jack Quaid & Erin Moriarty Talk The Boys Season 2

ComingSoon.net had the chance to speak with The Boys stars Jack Quaid and Erin Moriarty about what fans can expect for Hughie and Annie in the second season, which premiered today on Amazon Prime Video. You can check out the interview below!

In Season 2, The Boys are on the run from the law, hunted by the Supes, and desperately trying to regroup and fight back against Vought. In hiding, Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Frenchie (Tomer Capon), and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) try to adjust to a new normal, with Butcher (Karl Urban) nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Starlight (Erin Moriarty) must navigate her place in The Seven as Homelander (Antony Starr) sets his sights on taking complete control. His power is threatened with the addition of Stormfront (Aya Cash), a social-media-savvy new Supe, who has an agenda of her own. On top of that, the Supervillain threat takes center stage and makes waves as Vought seeks to capitalize on the nation’s paranoia.

The Boys is an irreverent take on what happens when superheroes, who are as popular as celebrities, as influential as politicians and as revered as gods, abuse their superpowers rather than use them for good. It’s the powerless against the super powerful as The Boys embark on a heroic quest to expose the truth about the supergroup known as “The Seven.” The show retains most of the comics (available for purchase here) boundary-pushing violence and sexuality while exploring the dark side of superhero celebrity and fame.

The series was created by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, who are responsible for another subversive comic book-inspired series, AMC’s Preacher, and Supernatural creator Eric Kripke.

Season 1 is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

ComingSoon.net What is your dynamic going to be like this season?

Erin Moriarty: Still tumultuous [laughs].

Jack Quaid: It’s interesting because their relationship continues, they have to work together to take down Vought and they have to put their feelings for each other, negative or positive, largely to the side. What was really interesting and fun to play with Erin was that all the cards were finally on the table.

Moriarty: Obviously we’re in such a different position in season two. The interesting thing about Hughie’s character and my relationship to him is that usually, I would say you can’t fall for someone you don’t really know who they are and what they’re about and there’s so much Hughie is hiding from Annie, but I would say that overall as they get to know each other, ironically she does really get to know maybe more than any of the other characters do in season one. I think that she totally falls for him and at the end of season one she gets her heartbroken and like Jack said they have to kind of get over that at an accelerated pace find a way to work together in season two. The dynamic was interesting to explore because you can’t shut feelings off so for me trying to play Annie in season two was a matter of mixing the resentment and heartbreak with residual love for him and it’s just like a very layered dynamic.

Quaid: It’s like a very long post-breakup partnership, it’s really interesting.

CS: Do they risk losing themselves and alienating each other with newfound confidence?

Moriarty: I think that’s always the risk, I think Hughie and Starlight serve as standard examples of people who have come from a small town or sheltered world where they’ve been sheltered by their parents and then they leave the home and they’re exposed to the realities of the world and the fact that not everyone’s to be trusted and I do think that it’s very common to momentarily lose yourself as a byproduct of putting up too thick of a wall. You go from being naive to aware and then almost too distrustful, so I do think that Annie is in a place of having a thick wall up and being heartbroken she’s just kind of on autopilot and has lost a little bit of her core self and a big part of season two trajectory and her journey is finding her way back to herself and the middle ground between not being naive and staying true to who she is.

Quaid: That’s just an interesting tension that our characters go through all the time, which is just you have to be the audience surrogate in a lot of ways, but you do want your character to start stepping up for themselves but you don’t want them to go too far. That is something that I’ve always found interesting about playing Hughie is that there’s times where he steps over the line and he recognizes it and then who’s job is it to pull himself back, does he have to pull himself back? I think that’s one of the key aspects of the character that I’ve just really enjoyed playing over the last two seasons.

CS: Can we expect to see the new developments with their parents transition into some kind of a reunion in this season or the next?

Moriarty: I think that, like a lot of things Annie’s going through that are the result of building up that emotional thick wall to be self-preservative, I think her mom is one ingredient to the thickness of that wall. I think finding herself as the season progresses does involve the prospect of forgiveness for her towards her mom.

Quaid: With Hughie’s dad, I feel like their tension was explored and ultimately more or less paid off in the first season as they finally come to a mutual understanding of each other. Because there was so much tension underneath the service for a while and it all just blew up as soon as Robin died and Hughie took this deathly journey. If anything I’m glad that Hughie’s dad is in the Witness Protection Program right now, because I think he could make things even more complicated for Hughie like in season one when A-Train went after him so they’re good but they’re definitely distant from each other right now, which is not great [chuckle], he misses his dad.