Antony Starr Plays TV’s Most Intriguing Villain

Sitting down with Antony Starr, 47, who plays perhaps the most intriguing villain on current television as Homelander on The Boys, is disconcerting. Homelander is an Aryan super-sociopath, a gleaming Mr America with a license to kill, Michael Ordoña writes in a profile piece for the Los Angeles Times. Starr, human-sized and chummy, sports fashionable chin scruff, one pair of glasses on his face and one hanging on his T-shirt collar; out of his photo-shoot couture and into some shorts, his accent is pure New Zealand. And most of all, he’s so … nice.

You’re waiting for the trap to spring.

Homelander is an Übermensch perpetually in uniform as general-emperor of his own army.

“You can take it however you want. If you want to just watch something that’s thoroughly entertaining, a little crazy, and you’ve got a stomach for it,” says the actor, “you can do that. But there’s so many details that are put in there, so many Easter eggs,” Wellington-born Starr says.

Starr played the dual roles of Jethro and Van West on Outrageous Fortune. In The Boys, he stars opposite fellow New Zealander Karl Urban, 51, who plays Billy Butcher.

Original article by Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2023.

Photo by Nolwen Cifuentes.