Inside This Week’s The Boys’ Musical Number With Daveed Diggs
This article comprises spoilers for The Boys Season 5, Episode 7, which is offered on Prime Video now.
Homelander (Antony Starr) is your god now… or at the very least, the newly established Democratic Church of America would very very like him to be. As of this week’s penultimate episode of Prime Video’s The Boys, titled “The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk,” he is obtained the musical quantity to show it, if Oh Father (Daveed Diggs) can get his performers on top of things on the present’s newest barn-burner – a profane, prophetic ditty that urges followers of the Supe to “raise him up.”
The present has featured a number of musical numbers earlier than, from Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) and Frenchie’s (Tomer Capone) outdated Hollywood dance quantity to “I Got Rhythm” in Season 3, to Season 4’s outrageous Ice Capades-infused “Let’s Put The Christ Back In Christmas.” But it is nonetheless a shock when everybody bursts into track on the darkish superhero sequence; it is much less of a shock while you solid Broadway icon Diggs, who originated the roles of Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton. Funnily sufficient, the musical occurred as a result of Diggs was solid and never the opposite means round.
“I was in London, I believe, and I saw the announcement that Daveed got cast in the show, and they didn’t even say what, they just said, ‘Daveed Diggs has been added to the cast of The Boys for Season 5,’ composer Christopher Lennertz told IGN. “I immediately texted [showrunner Eric] Kripke and it was like, ‘if he’s on the show and we don’t have him sing, we all deserve what we get. It’s a transvestite.’”
Just a few hours later (eleven he had woken up after the 3am PT textual content), Kripke texted Lennertz again, asking the keen composer to “give me a beat.” That beat, it seems, was a number of months later, as Diggs’ casting was announced on September 24, 2024, the ultimate season of the sequence began production on November 25, 2024, and it wasn’t till they had been already halfway by means of manufacturing that Kripke broached the topic together with his performer.
“We were a few episodes in already, and Kripke, very sweetly and almost sheepishly, approached me with this idea,” Diggs defined to IGN, “and I was very appreciative of how he approached because certainly people have asked me to do musical numbers and other things, and I generally refuse. But they do music so well on this show.”
Lennertz, in the meantime, was ready with bated breath as he “started hearing, ‘oh, there might be a shot at it,’ and [Kripke] “kept smiling.”
Ultimately, what swayed Diggs was the identical factor that swayed him to hitch The Boys in any respect. “I entered with the mindset, I really trust what these writers are doing, and I want to be along for the ride. I want to do all the crazy things they want to do. So when they did approach me with it, I took a day to think about it, to make sure that it felt good to myself. And I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do this. This is gonna be super fun.’ And I was right.”
After that, a few short months before the seventh episode was going into production, Lennertz finally got the script pages with the reveal of what the content of the song would be, and he couldn’t have been more elated. “Once I learn it, I used to be like, ‘Oh, my god, he is gonna announce Homelander is god. It simply could not be extra good.”
“It’s all about hearts and minds,” Diggs added on the thrust of the musical quantity. “We’re making an attempt to get the youngsters on board. We obtained to get everyone on board. Everybody needs to be dancing. It’s obtained to be the outdated girls and the youngsters and the infants, everyone, all of us must be on this.”
Once the subject of the song was decided, it was time to actually do the thing, which both Lennertz and Diggs noted was a collaborative effort between the two of them as well as showrunner Kripke. “He’s a genius, man,” Lennertz said of working with Diggs. In fact, Lennertz requested being able to write with Diggs because he knew the actor needed to perform the number “in a cadence and rhythm he feels comfortable with.” Not only that, but there’s the tricky nature of Diggs performing the number not as Diggss, but in character as Oh Father, a super-powered preacher utterly devoted to proselytizing the word of Homelander. The number itself is also gospel-inspired, meaning that “even when they’re speaking, it’s almost like song.”
With all those thoughts in the mix, Diggs and Lennertz began breaking down the lyrics. “We had been texting couplets backwards and forwards,” Lennertz said, with Diggs adding that “Chris was tremendous collaborative. It was superior. Ultimately, I did not have any actually musical or textual notes, possibly one little textual content tweak. But it was actually Chris and his workforce and Kripke retaining me within the loop.” Once the lyrics were good to go, the team brought the production to Kripke. According to Lennertz, he “wrote a few phrases on it too. We actually constructed it in a method to attempt to make it really feel prefer it was a singing model of what the viewers had already gotten used to [with] “Oh Father up until this point of the show.”
Just in case you are shaking your head studying this and saying, “Yeah right, that’s Daveed up there,” properly… he disagrees. The multi-hyphenate defined to Lennertz that he is “more of a rapper” and does “a lot of modern stuff,” whereas the quantity itself, per the temporary from Kripke, was meant to be nearer to R&B duo Sam & Dave and the legendary James Brown, whereas Lennertz additionally pitched Otis Redding. Lennertz did admit that “there’s plenty of Daveed in it – all of his attitude, all of his charisma.” But in the end the aim was to channel Oh Father.
“He came in to record it at my studio here in LA,” Lennertz stated, “and by taking number two, we’re like, ‘I don’t know, man, it’s pretty great. If you want to do it again, you can, but it’s awesome.’ “He had that swagger that’s part of his own personality.”
“The day of doing the vocal recordings was a really fun collaborative day,” Diggs added, “figuring out how to pitch things, and the actual performance side of it.” It helped that by that point, Diggs had already performed a pseudo-musical number on his first day on the show: the sermon memorializing A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) in Episode 2 of the season. “I was already good, and that was before they asked me to do a musical number,” Diggs continued.
While everything with Diggs went swimmingly, Lennertz notes that the song “was recorded somewhat backwards” from the way they would normally approach something like this. The regular procedure is to create a demo and then have Diggs return to finish the song, but because of the demanding production schedule and limited time with the actor, they had to complete the rhythm section – bass, drums, guitar – first. Then they brought in Diggs, before finishing with brass, strings, and finally the choir. The whole thing needed to be finished before shooting the number, while Diggs was on his way back to Toronto to finish up shooting the season.
“We wanted to guarantee that the drum fills lined up, and the gospel choir behind him was singing the appropriate background vocals. We in all probability obtained that executed 10 days earlier than they shot it.” From there, the choir memorized the words, choreographer Amy Wright mapped out the dance, and Lennertz flew out just in time to watch them film the sequence. “I used to be having a tough time not laughing too loud. I do know they’re taking pictures and I should not make any noise, but it surely’s simply so humorous. It was such an incredible, nice sequence.”
One potential challenge to the performance was the bulky superhero costume Diggs dons as Oh Father, potentially limiting his movement. As Diggs notes, however, his supersuit was “the beneficiary of 5 seasons of R and D on these costumes. Judging from how everyone else felt on a regular basis, I in all probability had probably the most snug and movable costume out of anyone’s. It’s not the most snug, however they take six months at the very least to construct this stuff, and we did so many fittings and so they’re so exact. It will get heat, and singing like that with all the additional weight and strain on it, after the fortieth take, it’s more durable. But all issues thought of, it is really a fairly forgiving swimsuit.”
Perhaps probably the most surprising a part of the quantity, although, is how prescient it’s. A significant plotline of the season follows Homelander seeing a imaginative and prescient of Elisabeth Shue’s Madelyn Stillwell as an angel, and subsequently deciding to make himself into America’s new god. Then, mere days earlier than the plotline debuted within the season’s third episode, President Trump posted a meme that depicted him as, one would possibly argue, a Jesus-like determine.
“It was like the universe put a silver platter of gifts on our play,” Lennertz stated laughing, when requested if he had any hesitation concerning the track after this sequence of actual world occasions. “The entire sequence and song was done six months before the election last year. We shot most of it in May, so way before the election. And then it happened. And then beyond that, he literally dropped that crazy meme. And next week, Elisabeth Shue is taking off her top like an angel and saying you’re the chosen one, and it looked just like [the meme]. It had the bright lights, and I couldn’t believe it.”
“So I’m really excited to see what people’s reactions to the song are, because it’s too close, right? I mean, because the crazy thing is [that] Trump doesn’t make these memes, he reshares them. In the background, all these people and fans are feeding him things like, ‘Ooh, you should be God. You’re really the chosen one.’ It’s just like Homelander. There’s literally the one line where Eric was like, ‘well, that’s the line that’s got to be in there.’ And it says, ‘We need a God who’s strong and just and American like us.’ And then Daveed improvised the salute, and on the day, I was watching him do it. I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is so perfect.’ But even then, I didn’t know that it was exactly what’s going on, [with Pete] Hegseth literally talking every day about how what we’re doing is divine. I think our writers room is the new Simpsons, and it blows my mind every day how many things they get right. It’s very scary. It’s a little bit sad. But it’s also amazing.”
Since the series finale probably It doesn’t end with a big song and dance number recapping the show, this is likely Lennertz’s final musical number for The Boys. “It’s bittersweet to go out, certainly, but it is a great way going out with Daveed Diggs announcing the second coming of Jesus Christ in a cape and suit with a codpiece, as someone who loves to do satire,” Lennertz said. “I do not know if I may consider a greater setup than that. It actually was the head, [putting] Homelander on the best rung, and to do it with somebody who might be one of many best performers on Broadway within the final 20 years. Man, that was a deal with. I’ll let you know that.”
That stated, this is not the final you will see – or slightly hear – from Lennertz in The Boys’ universe. “I am coming back for Vought Rising,” Lennertz teased about The Boys prequel sequence. “[I’m] very excited. We actually started the music a little bit. And Eric seems to love the songs. So without any spoilers, I hope that there’s going to be some songs in the show.”
Perhaps Lennertz, who wrote songs for the prolonged model of Marvel’s Rogers: The Musical that briefly performed at Disney’s California Adventure theme park, will convey a few of the “Star Spangled Man” with a plan to Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy within the upcoming sequence? We’ll have to attend and see on that one, however on the flip aspect, will we ever get to see Diggs carry out this episode’s musical quantity stay on stage?
“I don’t know!” Diggs stated. “I haven’t thought about that until you said it. You won’t see it on my tour, only if The Boys is asking me to do it.”
So is that affirmation of The Boys: Live On Broadway?
“Yeah, yeah!” Diggs stated, laughing, earlier than including, “Eight shows a week is a tall order for Oh Father.”