The star of The Boys is often in the show’s most shocking and meme-able scenes, but fans have been surprised by how he adds absurdist pathos to them.

The Boys isn’t known for being a very subtle movie. The hit Prime Video show is, after all, a subversive take on the superhero genre, in which the “heroes”—and those scare quotes are doing some super-human heavy lifting there—usually do more harm than good. The current third season opens with a penis exploding when an amazing shrinking hero (let’s call him a “Ant-ish Man”) crawls into his lover’s urethra, sneezes, and accidentally bursts back to his normal size. And if that wasn’t enough, fans of the original comic series by Garth Ennis were looking forward to the show’s latest episode because it was called “Herogasm,” which was also the name of a famous storyline in the comics. The main part of the episode is a secret, supercharged orgy. “These violent delights have violent ends,” Shakespeare once wrote. He probably would have been eaten to death at Herogasm.

But that doesn’t mean that The Boys doesn’t have any depth. You just have to look for it in some very, very strange places, like when one of its stars, Chace Crawford, is caught mid-coitus with an octopus in a scene from “Herogasm” that became an instant classic. Crawford’s character is called “the Deep,” and he can live under water and talk to sea creatures, sometimes in ways that are too close for comfort.

Crawford used to play the brooding heartthrob Nate Archibald on Gossip Girl. Now, on The Boys, he is a source of both funny moments and a strange kind of sadness. Eric Kripke, who created and runs the show, says that he saw Crawford’s strange combination right away during her “amazing” audition. “It’s hard to find the right balance and mix the colors,” he says, “but Chace did it with ease.” The Deep is a jerk, a narcissist, and an emotionally stunted man-child. He often shows more compassion for the sea creatures he befriends, but he usually ends up killing them in whatever new and horrible way Kripke and his team can come up with.

Kripke says, “Cace is the only reason why The Deep is one of our favorite characters to write for.” “He is really good at making people laugh with his body.” He also says that the cast is told to improvise, but Crawford does so with a steady stream of small lines and moments. “I don’t know if anyone expected me to play the comedic scenes the way I did,” says Crawford.

And while he’s become a fan favorite for being in some of the show’s most shocking and meme-able funny scenes, it’s the subtle ways he gives the character insecurity and a constant sense of existential panic that give the Deep, well, depth. The very violent mistake that made him look sad is just as funny as the sad look on his face.

So we sat down with Crawford to find out how he does it, as well as what went on behind the scenes of “Herogasm” and many other crazy scenes this season.

When you get a new script for The Boys, what do you think?

I give my therapist a call. [laughs] I always say it’s like going through the seven stages of grief. First, you don’t believe it, then you try to change it, and finally, you give up. But I remember reading the first 20 pages of the first episode of this season and thinking, “How are they going to do that?” And they were successful. I always think I know how my stories will end, but they never do. It’s always something that makes no sense at all. And there has been a lot of that this season. Kripke asked me before this season, “Did you see the movie My Octopus Teacher? Did you watch that movie?” And I was like, “I did. It was very sad and moved me a lot. I don’t think that’s where you’ll take it!”

I can’t get over the scene from earlier this season where the Deep was forced to eat Timothy the Octopus while saying, “He’s praying!” How did you make it through that shoot?

Our VFX supervisor, Stephan [Szpak-Fleet], is great. When I saw it in the episode, I thought, “Oh my god, that looks awful!” Since there wasn’t much on the plate when we took the picture. Almost like a mochi with syrup inside. It kind of put me off pancakes for a while. They just put some Scotch tape with strings on my face and pulled a little bit on my face. It was a lot of the same. Then they added all the special effects, and it looks so great. I mean, you can see why our VFX team was nominated for an Emmy last year.

Even funnier, I just got an email a few days ago saying that PETA gave us an award! [laughs] They gave it to Kripke, me, and the VFX team because we didn’t use a real octopus in the scene. It’s amazing and funny at the same time. And it really does take a lot of work! Stephan and the rest of the team go through scenes frame by frame to do things like that so that the special effects look great. On a show like ours, that kind of thing is very important. You can tell when something isn’t done well, and our effects look like they belong in a movie.

“Every time you saw someone, it was like listening to a war story. “Have you been to set yet?” people ask when they come back from a scene.”

Well, you’d need some major VFX for a man crawling through a urethra to be the first scene of the season.
Yes, as the number of people who watch us grows, we get more money and can make these big set pieces. And that was a big scene, in more ways than one.

In the most recent episode, there is a superhero orgy called “Herogasm.” It was based on a famously bad comics arc. And the show’s version did not let anyone down. How did it feel to film those scenes?
Oh man, it felt like we had been filming for a month. And every time you saw someone, it was like listening to a war story. “Have you been to set yet?”: People coming back from a scene. Crew members were smoking cigarettes outside the studio while saying, “The things I’ve seen…” They had never smoked a day in their lives. When the editors got the daily papers, they would say, “This is some crazy shite!” But our scenes were pretty separate—while I was filming my parts, I didn’t really get to see what the other actors were doing. So you walk onto the set, and there are strange liquids all over, and you don’t know what’s going on. One of the funniest stories was about how we still had all the usual COVID protocols, so people would go to get a pump of hand sanitizer and then realize, “Ugh, this is lube!”

I don’t know where they got these extras, but they were all really cool, and after a minute or so, it helped make everyone feel more at ease on set, you know? Even more so for Jack [Quaid], who was as naked as he has ever been.

Have you ever been filming and thought to yourself, “I don’t know if I can do this?”
Well, Kripke’s amazing. His door is always open, he responds right away to emails, and he will always pick up the phone. And I don’t usually bother anyone! But there was one scene in this episode that made me jump out of bed in the middle of the night. I was like, “What?” the next morning “I need to know how the camera is set up from every angle. What’s going on? Can’t we pass on this? How will I get to sleep?” And Kripke laughed and said, “We’ll never make you do anything you don’t want to do, so let’s talk about this.” So that was the only time I broke down like that.

I think we all know what scene you’re talking about: Starlight walking into the Deep with an octopus wrapped around his crotch, a scene that has become famous.
That’s right, it was the part with the octopus. And it felt like a 40-pound rig was hanging around my neck. Again, Stephan was so great. He saw that I was in a little bit of pain and said, “Let’s just cut off some of those tentacles! I’ll just do it in post.” So he was just cutting the fake arms off.

Still, you did better than Mother’s Milk actor Laz Alonso. He has now met a giant penis that seems to be alive more than once. In this episode, he finds himself in the middle of it in a new way…
I think that him talking about it has made it worse! So now it’s a running gag. God bless that I’m not Laz!

“We try to deal with the characters in a graceful and nuanced way…

In a way, all of the blood, guts, and gore are just for show.”

Moving on to scenes with clothes, is it true that your costume has a little padding in the buttocks?

Did I already say that? I must have! Funny thing is, after all the fittings, early mock-ups, and changes we made to the Deep’s costume, they chose the one with no sleeves. So I was like, “Okay! It looks like every day is arm day!”

But LJ [Laura Jean Shannon], who designs our supersuits and the supersuits for every other superhero show on TV, is amazing. I didn’t know how long and complicated the process was—it took about six months and 13 fittings. The main part of my costume is a wetsuit. But she makes these interiors and foam pads that fit your body perfectly and can help you in some places. Yes, they did help me out in the back. So I no longer worry as much about leg day.

And they want the suits to look like they’ve been worn. I think it’s one of the funniest jokes on the show that we supers never wear anything else but those costumes. I’ve never had a fitting that wasn’t something like, “Try this trench coat on!” Then, when Deep goes grocery shopping, he just puts it on over his costume while still wearing his gloves and everything else.

The scene in season two where he shows that he has gills under his vest was even more shocking because he never takes off his costume. Even more so because he feels unsafe and violated when the woman he’s with puts her hands in them without his permission.
Right? He has so much doubt about them, which is a key part of his character.

Your character has become a funny one, which is a bit strange. When we first meet him in the first episode of the show, he is trying to get Starlight, the newest member of the Seven, to have oral sex with him. He is a jerk and a stalker. But he’s also a broken man-child who wants to be seen as a hero. He’s also a fuck-up, which is the punchline to many of the big visual jokes in the show. How do you keep everything in check?
You know, when I read the pilot, that scene wasn’t even there. But it’s a big part of one of the early comics. It’s even shot the same way from behind. And they wanted to put it back in as a big starting point for Erin Moriarty’s character, who plays Starlight. She just got back from Indiana and was excited to be a superhero. Then she had this terrible never-meet-your-heroes moment. I was scared to shoot that. But Krikpe was so cool when he told us everything. He said, “Listen, the weirder the comedy and the crazier the violence, the more we need to handle scenes like that with nuance and realism.” Our show isn’t really black and white, and there aren’t any pure good guys. Deep is such a spoiled brat that he didn’t even realize that what he was doing was so wrong. For him, it was a normal part of growing up that had happened before. That’s very gloomy. Then we see more of how deeply flawed and insecure he is, like when he gets attacked in that [season 2] gill scene.

So there’s a big change in tone between scenes like when the Deep is trying to save a dolphin from Oceanland and accidentally throws it out the window of his car. I’m not sure if anyone really knew if the dolphin scene was going to work or not. But because everyone on set worked together so well, they let me improvise a lot and just go with it, and it turned out to be one of the most popular scenes. So they just ran with it, and they keep throwing me curveballs, which are always things you’ve never seen on TV before. Then we try to deal with the characters in a graceful and nuanced way.

It seems strange to say that this show is sometimes about subtleties, but it is.

In fact, it does. In a way, all of the blood, guts, and gore are just for show.

On “The Boys,” the show’s heroes are often used to look at different parts of our culture that are broken or don’t work right. Did you know from the start that your character would become a symbol for asking questions about toxic masculinity?

I think it was pretty clear from the first episode onward. I knew that the character would make fun of rich, white, male, privileged assholes like that. This is where the satire comes in. I think we all know people like this to some degree. It’s just someone who isn’t very self-aware, is a total narcissist, and looks at everything through the lens of “How does this improve my status?” He’s like an athlete who maybe wasn’t a great player but doesn’t want to be kicked off the team because he needs the celebrity status that comes with being on the team, which can be addicting. And the Deep has hit rock bottom after being sent to Sandusky, Ohio in season two, where he ends up swearing at kids in a water park. So it all comes down to a deep need to be seen as important, right? He’s always trying to prove himself, but he doesn’t know how. Like when he says sorry to the public on camera this season. We’ve seen this happen a lot in real life, and I’m sure you could find a lot of examples on YouTube. “I did it. I said I’m sorry. I spoke those words. Are you all cool now?” But that’s the gray area we play in, which is so refreshing compared to traditional superhero stories in which right and wrong are often very clear.

So much of The Boys is a cynical look at how superheroes would work in the real world: as unchecked sociopaths, unstable weapons of war, and puppets of powerful corporations. After being on this show, would you be able to act seriously in a Marvel or DC movie? Would you be interested?

I have to admit that I would love to! But yeah, it might be hard to do now without laughing. And at this point, they might not let me!