The Boys star Erin Moriarity is out of her normal monochrome New York uniform to don a swimsuit at the beach. Moriarity, who plays Annie January/Starlight on the show, shared pictures of herself wearing a red bikini and silver under-eye mask, soaking up the sun by the ocean. “Dog mom on vacation (approaching her 30s and embracing the eye mask life),” she captioned the post. Here’s how Moriarity trained for The Boys, and what she thinks about superhero roles for women in Hollywood.
Moriarity learned to do stunts on set for The Boys. “We work with a really awesome stunt coordinator on this and I think that he really wanted to make sure that we embody the physicality of a superhero easily and believably,” she says. “Leading up to season 1, I did some lessons with him that were sort of like a boxing / Muay Thai / martial arts hybrid, that when I have to learn choreography for fight sequences, it came more easily to me. I had been training with him and then one of the first night shoots that I had in which the entire night consisted of me doing a fight sequence and I hadn’t had experience with this type of thing prior to the show, and it was so much fun.”
Moriarity prefers muted colors when it comes to her personal style. “I would say that growing up in New York City very much shaped the clothing I wear, and I do fall into the stereotype of always wearing black and gray,” she says. “And in the summer, I’m often in white. I do wear color, but for the most part, I love those neutral, charcoal, and black tones. I also love a very functional look that I know I can go out and be comfortable in, which is very much a New York City component because you are walking all day and taking the train, and it’s a little bit more of a depleting lifestyle.”
Moriarity is excited about the future for female performers. “I think we have a long way to go until ultimate equality is felt among genders and race,” she says. “I think starting with the superhero genre—which is accessible to kids a lot of the times, maybe less so with The Boys but more so with films like Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman—it sends out a subliminal message that those characters who are really within their strengths are not just owned and taken up by men. So I think we do have some examples that are being portrayed in mainstream media. The Boys is cool because, like you said, it’s ironically opposed to the title, but there are really strong females in it.”
Moriarity used her own experiences to really round out the character of Starlight. “I think that for me it was tapping into personal experiences, experiences of those to whom I have been around and to whom I have been close, while wanting as much as I possibly could to make her as nuanced,” she says. “So really sitting down and building a backstory for her, making sure that I honor the fact that she is a dichotomy in a very cool way, which is that she is so tough and she is such a badass and such a cool superhero, but she is also really earnest and a kind human being and arguably one of the kindest on the show.”
Moriarity loves how unique and satirical The Boys is. “When I first got the script and I read the logline, I was like okay, this is going to be another superhero show,” she says. “I love superhero shows, but we have so many of them, and so I thought this has to be something really special with the genre if it’s going to be able to stand out… Plus, the social commentary aspect of it, I thought, was really cool. As a young woman in this industry and someone who is consuming documentaries and the news when it comes to politics and men in high places taking advantage of their own mission, I’m so sick of it. To be a part of a show that comments on it and maybe makes the subject less taboo is really enjoyable, and it gives it a greater purpose than just being a TV show, which is cool.”