For Karen Fukuhara, who plays Kimiko Miyashiro, the mute supe on “The Boys,” her character’s silence was always about more than just a physical deficiency.
Unpacking how she and showrunner Eric Kripke came up with the backstory of her character’s muteness, she told TheWrap that it was her suggestion to not rely on physical trauma for the trait.
“From initial conversations with Kripke, we spoke about having Kimiko’s muteness not come from a physical attribute because if it was a physical attribute, it’s sometimes impossible to get your voice back after a physical trauma,” Fukuhara told TheWrap. “So I said to [Kripke], I don’t think it can be a physical attribute if we want that tinge of hope, if we want to change the storyline or incorporate that in future seasons, and he was really receptive to that early on.”
Aside from Kimiko getting her leg chopped off by Frenchie (Tomer Capone) in Season 4, Episode 7 in order to save her from the supe-killing virus, it’s a pretty eventful episode, as viewers learn the true reasons behind her silence. While Kimiko previously said it was due to the overwhelming shock she experienced seeing her family murdered and being abducted by the Shining Light Liberation Army, she explained that was just a lie she told her brother Kenji. The truth is that she couldn’t get over the number of young girls she killed in her Shining Light training.
During her time in Shining Light, elder members taught new soldiers how to move like a “ghost.” In order to train them to fight free of noise, soldiers were forced to participate in training activities that involved them knife fighting quietly. The first person to cry out loses, even if it means death.
“I murdered her without making a sound. Then when I was allowed to speak again … I couldn’t,” Kimiko signed in the episode, explaining that she can relate to the self-disgust Frenchie feels over his Russian assassin past. “I look in the mirror and hate what I see, so I understand more than you know.”
It wasn’t until reading the script that Fukuhara learned the official storyline for Kimiko’s muteness. The actress said she was overjoyed with the writers’ decision to have the origin of Kimiko’s silence to come from the regrets of her past.
“I love it because this entire season is about even the heroic characters facing their demons, such as Annie’s past with Firecracker. She was never this cookie-cutter good person that we always expected her to be, and I love that entire storyline and backstory because it gives her a lot more humanity. I think the writers were able to do that with Kimiko,” Fukuhara said. “She’s always kind of viewed herself as a victim to Shining Light, a victim to Compound V. A victim to all the s–tty things that have come her way, but Season 4 ,she had to face her own own darkness and own up to all the wrongdoing she did to other people.”
The actress praised Kripke for his openness to collaboration with actors when it comes to character development and plot twists.
“It almost feels like you’re bringing these ideas to a friend because it’s so comfortable and it’s always met with welcoming hands and you never feel like you presented a dumb idea or something that was outright bad,” she said. “He’ll always have justifications as to why he liked your idea or didn’t like your idea, so you leave that conversation feeling seen and heard. And that’s all that [actors] want from the showrunner. It makes the world of a difference.”
