The Boys star Antony Starr doesn’t understand why people admire his vile character so much

The internet has a weird obsession with charismatic, narcissistic villains, be it Homelander from The Boys or Joe Goldberg in You. However, the actors who've played these characters are surprised by the admiration their characters receive and wish it weren't so.

In a recent conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Antony Starr, who plays the psychopathic and sadistic villain (who thinks he's a hero), Homelander, on The Boys, revealed his surprise at the ways fans glorify his character's sociopathic and narcissistic tendencies.

Antony Starr reveals his confusion around fans empathizing with Homelander in The Boys

Since its premiere in 2019, Homelander's character and his kill count in The Boys have only gotten worse as the seasons have progressed. Homelander's list of unhinged behavior keeps getting longer and worse with every season, where staging an actual coup of America manages to fall pretty low on the list.

However, Antony Starr revealed that even after the peak unhinged actions by Homelander in The Boys, fans somehow still manage to empathize with the sociopathic and narcissistic villain. Some even go as far as admiring the character, which is truly out of Starr's understanding.

He revealed that he even went as far as telling a bunch of fans on social media that they need to stop painting Homelander as the hero, because Homelander cannot be the hero in any version of the story. It was almost surreal for him to watch fans glorify and empathize with Homelander's actions.

"We had a bunch of guys that we all kind of knocked them down a little but on social media to say, 'This guy is not the hero of any story,'"

Homelander, the character who is so unimpressed and has so much contempt for people weaker than him, went as far as literally deafening a blind supe in an abuse of his power. His narcissistic kinks go so far that he hires a superhero who can shapeshift and kills them in a move of empowerment when the shapeshifter turns into Homelander himself to protect themselves from Homelander's abuse.

"They were really glorifying him, they loved him, which is surreal. What I didn't expect was that people would be so conflicted around it and, you know, finding themselves finding empathy for this monster."

Even though Homelander can be considered a more complex and three-dimensional character than any mustache-twirling villain, much like Joe in You, there is no world in which fans should find a way to empathize with or glorify the actions of these characters. It is a deeply problematic mindset, and it appears as if Starr is of a similar opinion.

The Boys Season 5, the final season for this series, is in production at the moment, and even though there are no official updates regarding a release window, it will hopefully be released sometime this year.

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