With the imminent approach of The Boys Season Two approaching faster than a speeding A-Train, we had the chance to have a chat with creator and showrunner Eric Kripke about the importance of maintaining The Boys‘ sense of humor and why comedy is especially important in 2020. Read the interview below and listen to the audio here!
There may be spoilers for Season 2 below, this is your warning!
Nerds and Beyond: Hi! The Boys, as you know, can be super dark. It deals with issues like vigilante justice – on both sides (Supes and regular humans) – capitalism, and the ways that it impacts the world and America, but it’s also so funny. And I was wondering if you could talk about why humor is such an important element to the overall story, especially now in these tumultuous times why we might need to laugh?
Eric Kripke: That’s a good question. I mean, a lot of it starts with the comic, because the comic is very funny. I mean it’s shocking and profane and inappropriate in a lot of places, but also very funny. And, I think between, Seth Rogan, Evan Goldberg, and I – you know, those guys being a thousand times funnier than me. But you know, I always liked to write comedy into my writing anyways. I like to sort of balance comedy with scares and with emotion. And I think comedy is really useful as a way to get people off kilter. So from the beginning, it’s funny, we never even thought of a version of it that wasn’t funny. And I would say the core notion is, what if superheroes were actually real in our world right now?
And because superheroes are, if you look at them realistically, so f*cking absurd. Like the idea is absurd, so when you put them in the real world, inherently absurd things start to happen. You know, you start to have races that only last a quarter of a second, you have ridiculous shit start to roll. So it was just us following that. And, I would say that there is for sure a version of this show which would make everyone want to kill themselves. You know, the version that most accurately reflects the world we currently live in would be just so depressing. So part of this also is the spoonful of sugar.
NaB: Thank you!
Eric Kripke: Thanks!
Remember to watch The Boys season two starting September 4 on Amazon Prime and stay tuned for interviews with the rest of the cast!
(Interview has been edited for clarity.)
