Gen V actor Chance Perdomo shared the story behind Jensen Ackles’ unforgettable cameo as Soldier Boy, revealing how it actually made filming fairly difficult that day.
In the first season of Gen V, the live-action spinoff series for The Boys, Ackles appeared as Soldier Boy, though he was an imagined version of the character encountered inside the mind of Maddie Phillips’ Cate. While not the real Soldier Boy, the character was not any less vulgar, as he fired off several raunchy lines that can’t be printed here. Per Variety, Perdomo spoke about how Ackles had ad-libbed his performance, coming up with a wide variety of filthy phrases. The problem with this was that it gave the Gen V stars great difficulty in staying in character, as Perdomo estimates that only around 10% of the footage they shot was usable as a result.
“We spent a good couple of hours, just sat there watching Jensen improv the most crazy, out-of-pocket lines to say, and I think maybe only 10% of those we managed to get through with a straight f***ing face. Excuse my French, but it was absolutely hilarious,” Perdomo said.
The Soldier Boy Cameo Was Nearly Reserved for a Twilight Star
Bringing in Ackles for a Soldier Boy cameo worked out perfectly, given how well it was received by fans; Perdomo also said it was perhaps his favorite cameo of Gen V. However, during the writing process, it was almost scripted to be someone else entirely. Executive producer Eric Kripke previously revealed to Variety that the original plan was to have Taylor Lautner come in for the cameo, which would’ve revealed that Cate was a big Twilight fan who crushed on the Jacob Black actor when she was younger.
“[Ackles’] only request was, ‘I think it could be funnier.’ I was like, absolutely,” Kripke also said of what led to the improvisation. “I was gonna be there, so I said, ‘I’ll be there, and you and I will just riff and riff and riff.’ We just shot so much stuff that I would say only 10% of it is in the episode. You cannot believe how many euphemisms for masturbation we came up with. Countless, countless euphemisms. And then we put in our favorites and that was the scene.”
The fourth season of The Boys is also expected to bring back Soldier Boy, but that remains to be seen. Season 4 of the series will hit Prime Video in 2024 on a date yet to be announced.
Source: Variety