in the universe to BoysRedemption arcs aren’t usually a thing, as the dark fate of Depp’s octopus lover illustrated this season. But Jessie T. Prince’s fastest man alive, A-Train, whose impenetrable arrogance has been eroding season after season, seems to be a major exception. With the season four finale now airing, Prince reflects on playing one of the show’s most nuanced characters, in an interview for our in-depth feature on Boys.
You have one of the most unpredictable characters on the show, and it seems like you'll end up as one of the rare characters who deserves sympathy. How do you feel about what's happening?
I think the process of trying to get people to sympathize is more fun. I really enjoyed the first two seasons of the show where you were just the antagonist, the guy you loved to hate. They even showed a human side to Homelander long before they showed a human side to A-Train. He was just a puppet. It seemed like his intention was always to just do whatever he was told and he didn't care. But then we kind of fleshed out his family dynamic a little bit more and brought back the things that made him human. And sympathy is there.
I was a little worried that they were going to kill you off last season.
Yes, A-Train almost died every season. [laughs]At the beginning of the season, nobody really knows who's going to die. And as the story unfolds in the writers' room, you might get a call or you might not. And there were a couple of times where I didn't get that call, but I was reading the pages and I was like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute! What's happening?” Last season, his heart stopped. I was like, “That's it!” And then he woke up in the hospital with a new heart. And you're like, “Wow, even death is no way out.” And it's something that plays on his psyche as well.
Were there any models in the world for the kind of arrogant, detached man he was at first?
I've always felt that arrogant athletes have the same personality. When you see guys coming out of college or whatever, and they're at the top of their game, and they're having a great time in their first year – in the NBA, they're walking down the tunnel to the game, and it's like they don't see people. They're just on top of the world. And I saw that and I said, “That's what I think A-train is.”
Funny enough, the same actor, Nathan Mitchell, is still playing Black Noir even though it's supposed to be a completely different character inside the suit this season.
Finally, I got the chance to act with him! I got to talk to him and interact with him. [take] My frustration with him is weird, because I know this person so well, but I have to pretend to be someone else. That was really interesting to play on set. I wasn't part of something where you lose a character and then gain what's supposed to be a new character, but it's the same person playing it. It's crazy, isn't it? It's weird to work with him.
What have you taken away from all the crazy interactions you've had with Antony Starr as Homelander over the years?
Oh my God. You can't mess with Anthony, that's for sure. You can't mess with Homelander, really don't. Anthony does a great job of creating realism in very strange scenarios. He does a great job of making you feel scared even when you know who's wearing the suit. His demeanor and everything about him changes when he puts the suit on and plays that stuff. It's going to be so weird, because we were laughing in the back and he took the muscle suit off. And then he puts the suit back on and all of a sudden we're back in it. And no matter what the relationship is, in that moment it feels like life or death.
Is it really that scary when he's in your face like that?
No, he's not really scary, man, no. Sometimes he can get to that point, a little bit, but then they'll yell “cut” and his real accent comes out and that's my friend. But I've noticed how much he scares other people, as the show has gotten more popular and we have daytime actors and background actors and stuff like that. When Anthony walks on the set, people actually treat him like Homelander. And I'm like, that's convincing right there. If they were walking down the hall, they'd spread out like the Red Sea because he's coming. And that's what makes him so great at this job.
Do people somehow expect you to be able to run fast in real life?
I get asked to run races almost every day. I tell them, “If you run the track, you’re going to beat me, bro.” It’s like I’m only fast on TV. I guarantee it. I hate running! My best friend runs marathons. He’s been begging me to run a marathon for years. I tell them, “No.” I don’t even run on a treadmill. I’ll do anything but run for cardio. I was so excited to find out that most of my running will be done in post-production. They’ll say, “Start and stop.” I tell them, “Great. I can do that. No problem.”
I think it's better to be challenged to a race than a fight, at least.
Don't come and challenge me as a strong man too! [Laughs.] “Because I don’t do that either. I met a kid who changed his whole life in high school because of A-Train and running. He loved the character so much, he decided to run cross-country and led his school to the championship that year. And he asked me one day, ‘Can we run a race?’ And I said, ‘You know what? I might actually run with this kid. He sounds cool.’”
The show mocks Hollywood as brutally as it mocks politics. Will Ferrell's scene this season was a scathing parody of Hollywood's racist supremacy.
Boys We're going to throw it right in your face and call it what it is and make fun of it. And we're going to do it with an icon. And it happened to be Will Ferrell. Oh my God, he was so funny on set. It was amazing. It was a really great day.
There's that interesting moment where the director tries to correct A-Train's grammar.
Yeah, it's interesting that throughout my career, I've had writers come to me and have this conversation: “Look, we want to write in your voice and we want to make it sound more like you or whatever.” And I'll say, “This is what I would have said.” And they'll say, “Are you sure?” Because I don't actually have bad grammar, or at least in this scenario. It's hard to explain the nuances. Sometimes they want something urban, and I'll say, “But you're asking me to use my voice and I'm telling you, my voice doesn't sound like that.”
We can always go to [showrunner] Eric [Kripke] “And he said, ‘Look, this is a real thing. People can relate to it. Can we find a way to incorporate this into the show?’ And he does a really good job of finding ways to incorporate that.”
Chace Crawford told me that his only hope was for The Deep to survive the show. Is that what you're thinking, too? Do you feel safer now that A-Train has managed to save himself?
Just because I know where A-Train came from and all the things he's done in his past, I think that's just optimistic thinking. I don't see a clean way out for him. At the same time, I would have been satisfied before as a viewer to see him get what he deserves. But now I think we've had enough time to see him try to confront what he's done where if he makes a transformation, like, okay, that's justified.
Finally, how does your career path so far compare to your expectations when you were younger?
When I was a teenager, I didn’t think I was going to be a professional actor. I was acting for fun. It was a hobby, like basketball or whatever. I thought I was going to grow up to be a culinary artist. I was like, “I’m going to be a chef.” That’s what I went to school for. I stopped acting a few times so I could pursue that and then I gave acting more and more, and now here we are. And I’m like, “Man, what happened to the steaks?” And that’s a far cry from where I even saw my acting career. I was a very dramatic actor in my younger years. But now I’m on this show where I’m wearing this superhero suit, but I’m getting all the elements that I fell in love with, on a freak show. If you want to make God laugh, have a plan. That’s what happened to me. I was like, “This is what I’m going to do.” He’s like, “No, put this suit on.” [Laughs.]
