Eric Kripke unpacked everything that went into that butthole scene from “The Boys” Season 4 premiere, detailing the role he played in choosing the perfect back shot and Claudia Doumit’s reaction.
“The Boys” wouldn’t be “The Boys” without something absolutely outrageous happening at every turn, even if it’s the very first episode of the season. For those who need a reminder, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and Victoria Neuman (Doumit) made an agreement that she’d break Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) away from Homelander (Antony Starr) and, in exchange, Butcher would retrieve the damning files Hughie (Jack Quaid) has on her that prove she’s a murderous supe in hiding.
Towards the end of the episode, fans see Butcher struggling to decide if he’ll betray Hughie or keep his promise to Victoria. Luckily, Butcher chooses to ride with his Boys instead. However, Victoria doesn’t know that and is still anticipating a text from the British brute, so when he finally ends up sending her a message it’s not at all what she thought it would be — it’s a bootyhole.
The photo came as a complete surprise to Doumit.
“To be fair, I was not there that day,” Kripke explained to TheWrap. “But from my understanding, she was laughing her ass off and, you know, like, ‘Motherf–ers!’ All versions of that.”
In breaking down the backstory of the booty, Kripke said he wasn’t too anal about which shot he wanted, but he did take some time getting to the bottom of which image would work best.
“The woman who’s in charge of all our background actors found a model who was willing to show his butthole — just one guy,” Kripke said. “And they did a photoshoot of just different butthole poses. I don’t know what you would call it. Then I picked the most horrible one, because there’s some butthole photos that were too tasteful. I picked the most horrible one.”
He continued: “Usually, the way you shoot is you film wide shots and then you move in for closeups. For the wide shots for Claudia, what’s on the screen is just this blue square that [we replace] with the image later. So she’s reacting with a blue square in the wide shot. When we moved in for closeups, we said, ‘Well, we should put the real photo in so she’ll see it for the first time. You can see she’s working her ass off not to laugh in that scene. I think that’s kind of what makes it so great.”
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When asked if there were any other ideas for photos that they had in mind, Kripke said it was a bum from the very beginning.
“Yeah, from the first draft of the scripts [‘The Boys’ writer] David Reed wrote in, I think his exact words were, ‘And it’s a big ol’ butthole.’ That was always going to be it.’”
After the scene broke the internet, and following several DMs from fans, Kripke addressed the matter on his Instagram page.
“Because hundreds of you asked: the butthole from #TheBoys Season 4, Ep 1 is NOT Butcher’s (or Karl’s),” he wrote. “We hired a model (I don’t know his name). I chose the pic, based on about 20 different butthole shots. Yep, Hollywood is a glamorous dream factory.”
In the comments, Doumit commented, “Wow, it’s like I’m there again. Life is so beautiful.”
“The Boys” airs Thursdays on Prime Video.
