On last week’s Gen V season finale, Antony Starr swooped in from the sky as Homelander and accomplished a great deal in less than one-minute during an action-arresting cameo. Of course, one minute was only his screen time. This likely amounted to a full day of work, and while hashing out finale business, I not-so-casually wrote of Starr, “Whatever the guy is receiving for a paycheck, it isn’t enough.”
Additionally, Karl Urban popped into a credits scene as Billy Butcher, who was shown to be aware of the Supe virus shenanigans, which feels like a straight shot into the vigilante group’s approach to Season 4. He, like Starr, is one of the essential players in The Boys, and it’s hard to imagine either role being played by any other actor. So, how much did Starr and Urban get paid for their narrative-propelling Gen V appearances?
It must be noted that neither actor has spoken on the subject. However, wayyy at the bottom of an Entertainment Weekly piece about The Boys/Gen V‘s modular structure along with Starr and Urban’s cameos, The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke (amid a mountain of praise for the duo) is quoted as mentioning that Starr and Urban both did their cameos essentially for free. Hmm:
The Boys boss praised both Urban and Starr for filming these cameos on their days off from shooting the main show. “They’re shooting the first two or three episodes of The Boys and it’s grueling,” Kripke recalls. “Then we’re asking them to go to that [Gen V] set, put on the suits again, and work more with the fact that we have no money to pay you. Michelle said their support of the wider world is really, really impressive.”
That is, they were not paid in addition to their The Boys pay rate despite filming Gen V on their day off, which seems… again, hmm.
The issue is certainly a timely one. The SAG-AFTRA strike has prompted some actors to reveal that acting on a hit streaming show (like a few Orange Is The New Black cast members) doesn’t automatically bring the big bucks. Sometimes, these actors need night jobs to supplement their acting day jobs, and they’re not seeing much in the way of residuals, either. That is, of course, part of why actors are still on strike, nearly 120 days and counting.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)