'We were really looking to create the worst possible nightmare for Homelander,' Kripke tells ET of the newest addition.
A new Supe is making a stormy entrance on The Boys.
Aya Cash, who may be familiar to some through her work on the FX comedy You're the Worst, is the latest addition to the Amazon Prime Video superhero satire. In season 2, Cash plays Stormfront, a new character who threatens Homelander's standing as the Supes' unofficial leader and utilizes the powers of social media to advance her own questionable agenda. In the comics, Stormfront was male.
"I think it's really fun," Cash tells ET's Leanne Aguilera of the decision to gender-flip the role. "They've swapped the gender intentionally, not just because they needed another lady. They thought a lot about how to tell this story best for this time -- and that a woman would be a really interesting choice."
Creator and executive producer Eric Kripke explained that there were two primary reasons why he felt the change was necessary.
"We were really looking to create the worst possible nightmare for Homelander and the worst thing that could happen to Homelander was a woman who wasn't scared of him and was stealing his spotlight because he is a big, gaping whole of insecurity," Kripke says. "The idea that a woman could be more popular than him and not be scared of him, it's just so unbearable to him, so we did that."
"And then, for things I won't necessarily give away, she's revealed to be something quite different in the series and we wanted a character at first you sort of like," he continues. "But then as the season goes on, there's so many awful things about this character."
For the 38-year-old Cash, the excitement over playing against type was intriguing and thrilling after spending a better of her career doing comedy.
"That was really exciting to come in," the actress remarks, adding there was an element of play getting to "be really bad." "I mean, there's just so many reasons why I would never be cast in this role and the fact that they let me do it is incredible. I get to come in and get to be really bad, which is both fun sometimes and sometimes really uncomfortable and hard."
"Luckily, I had the incredible Antony Starr," Cash says, praising her co-star.
Kripke praised her performance, intimating that he knew she was a perfect fit for his vision for the updated character when she first stepped into the room to audition for the part.
"Aya is a genius. She came in our very first audition session and I was like, 'Oh, there she is,' 'cause she's so smart but her comic timing is just so incredible," Kripke says. "How she's able to [rely on] the strength of her intelligence and her wit. We needed someone who's going to stand in front of Homelander and intimidate him, not the other way around, and she just had that strength of character and humor that she could do it."
The first three episodes of The Boys season 2 drops Friday, Sept. 4 on Amazon Prime Video.
To stay up to date on breaking TV news, sign up for ET's daily newsletter.
RELATED CONTENT:
