‘The Boys’ Season 4 Took 10 Days to Film the Flat Iron Fight Scene in Episode 7

“The Boys” Season 4, Episode 7 featured one of the biggest fights of the season so far — so big, in fact, that it took a whopping 10 days to film.

The Flat Iron fight scene, directed by Catriona McKenzie, came between The Boys’ Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and Annie/Starlight (Erin Moriarty) and The Seven’s A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), The Deep (Chace Crawford) and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell). Filming was intense.

“Every day there was a fight, every day,” McKenzie told TheWrap. “The Flat Iron fight, [stunt coordinator and actor John] Koyama was the stunt coordinator on that — he’s amazing. Working with him and adjusting those fights, that was 10 days on one scene — that’s a movie. Ten days is one episode. It was really big.”

She continued, explaining why the scene was a 10-day mission. “The Flat Iron fight had multiple stunts happening at the same time. We had to prepare each section where the fight happened in stages as they destroyed it blow by crazy blow. The stunts were complicated. [Stunt coordinator] John Koyama and his team trained the actors for each section. We combined actor action with the physical destruction plus the VFX augmentation of each piece of action. That fight is the perfect example of filmmaking being a team sport. All the departments brought their A-game. It’s a beautiful thing to achieve.” 

For those who may need a recap, the beatdown between the longtime enemies at Flat Iron broke out after The Deep and Black Noir broke into The Boys’ headquarters. Butcher and Annie/Starlight started off needing to fend for themselves until A-Train and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) stepped in to help. Between machine guns and tons of furniture and glass being shattered, McKenzie said the scene used up a hefty amount of visual effects coupons productions give to different departments on set.

“Often in an episode, you get your coupons for VFX. Like, ‘Oh, you’ve got two and a half coupons, and you’ve got maybe three coupons for the big stunt work or VFX work or however you want to spend those resources,” Catriona explained.

As McKenzie said, Episode 7: “The Insider,” was jam-packed with lots of violence, gore and a supe (The Shape Shifter) literally mangling herself apart into a bloody mess. From Frenchie (Tomer Capone) saving Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) from the supe-killing virus to Homelander ripping Webweaver into two pieces, Episode 7 was a lot.

Another scene that took a robust amount of time was The Deep murdering Ambrosius.

“That was a very technical shot when he does what he does, but his reaction to it is actually the thing. So I always try to dig into the character and the performance beyond anything else,” McKenzie explained. “So he smashes the fish tank where Ambrosius is, but we can’t have an actor hit glass, so we have a blue screen where the glass and the water would be. And so he has to mime doing that, or he’s doing it, but he’s not really breaking glass; that’s going to be visual CGI. Water CGI doesn’t really look as good. And the water has to hit the actor, so it has to be interactive. So we had actual water hitting the deep. And that’s a timing thing because if a human being pulls the lever at the wrong time and the water doesn’t come out, it’s going to look weird. And we can’t really adjust that with VFX.”

She continued, saying they rehearsed the scene over a dozen times.

“So we rehearsed that shot, I don’t know, 20 times. It was flawless, and we did one take, rehearsed 20 times, at least, 25 times. Everyone felt like, ‘OK, I think we’re all in sync, and we did it once. That was the last shot of the night,” McKenzie continued. “Once the water spills out, you got to clean it up, the resets are just terrible. Everyone’s on point when that stuff is going down. The same with stunts, you don’t want anyone to get hurt. The first thing I always say is, ‘Is everyone OK?’ Because people are flying around as you saw. Quite the doozy, that Flat Iron fight.”

McKenzie, an award-winning Indigenous film and TV director who hails as a native Australian has worked on a slew of projects, including “Supernatural,” “Echo,” “Outer Range” and “The Walking Dead.” McKenzie, who is of Gunai/Kurnai descent, was the first Indigenous Australian woman to direct a TV series in the U.S., with her efforts on the drama “Shadowhunters.” Now with “The Boys” on her resume, she’s also going to check off directing on the show’s college-set spin-off, “Gen V.”

“I’m going to go up to Toronto in about two weeks to do ‘Gen V.’ I’m excited about that,” McKenzie said, also touching on the series ending with Season 5. “I don’t think ‘The Boys’ is going anywhere. ‘The Boys’ is wrapping up, and I love to be part of that. It’s sad, yet I know Eric. I know that he’s got plans afoot for other things.”

“The Boys” Season 4 is currently streaming on Prime Video.