‘The Boys’ Showrunner Eric Kripke on Timeliness of Series: ‘Sometimes We Feel Like We’re Satan’s Writers Room’
Harrison Richlin
Prime Video’s “The Boys” isn’t a show that pulls its punches. The hit television series is in fact known to be gratuitous in every regard, from its depiction of sex and violence to its timely socio-economic and political commentary. But for all the fun showrunner Eric Kripke and his staff have putting “The Boys” together, there’s also a great importance put on using the superhero narrative to capture something bigger about who we are as people and where we are as a country. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kripke said oftentimes, their writing parallels real life in eerie ways.
“Sometimes we feel like we’re Satan’s writers room,” said Kripke, addressing how the current season, revolving around a tense presidential election, may hit too close to home for some.
“When Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] and I took it out to pitch, it was 2016,” Kripke said later, explaining his perspective on staying relevant vs. just writing a good show. “We just wanted to do a very realistic version of a superhero show, one where superheroes are celebrities behaving badly. Trump was the, ‘He’s not really getting the nomination, is he?’ guy. When he got elected, we had a metaphor that said more about the current world. Suddenly, we were telling a story about the intersection of celebrity and authoritarianism and how social media and entertainment are used to sell fascism. We’re right in the eye of the storm. And once we realized that, I just felt an obligation to run in that direction as far as we could.”
Kripke denies any mystical prescience when it comes to timing his stories to current events, but says he’s just aware of how history repeats itself.
“It’s happened now almost every season, and we write them sometimes close to two years before they air and again we’ll find that the news is accurately reflecting whatever we’re talking about,” Kripke told THR. “It’s not a spoiler to say that first episode [of Season 4], Homelander (Antony Starr) is on trial. A big concern is ‘Can you convict someone that powerful of a crime?’ And what does that mean for the various supporters or the people protesting him? Did I know it was going to come out during Trump’s trial? Of course not. But we write what we’re either scared of or pissed off about. Someone asked me last year, about Season 3, ‘How are you so prescient with cops and over-policing in Black neighborhoods?’ Well, it’s been a problem for over 100 years. It was a problem five years ago, and, unfortunately, it’s going to be a problem five years from now. It’s always the same shit.”
“The Boys” Season 4 premieres June 13 on Prime Video.
