The Boys star Jack Quaid opens up about nude scenes and ‘really embarrassing’ superpower

‘I’m a superhero. If I got to be naked to do it, whatever’

The Boys star Jack Quaid has opened up about the “embarassing” development his character has undergone in the latest epiosde of the Prime Video hit.

In the violent superhero series, Quaid plays Hughie, one of the show’s central characters.

Spoilers follow for The Boys’ season three episode “Glorious Five Year Plan”...

In the episode, Hughie acquires temporary superpowers, courtesy of Butcher’s (Karl Urban)’s Temp V. However, the character is rendered naked whenever he activates the power of teleportation.

Speaking to Variety, series showrunner Eric Kripke explained: “We take every new power and say, what’s the most realistic version of that? And it kept coming up, if he can teleport, if he has an organic power to teleport, how does he bring his clothes along? Like, what is it? How do you do that? So we said, well, he probably wouldn’t.

“He would probably teleport right out of his clothes because it’s an organic power inside his body. And your clothes going with you would be magical, totally unrealistic. So you have to give Jack all the credit in the world; he saw he was going to be naked for so much of this season and just embraced it and owned it and it plays so funny and real.”

Quaid himself referenced X-Men character Nightcrawler as a partial inspiration for the character’s teleportation, saying that he had “always wanted to play a character with superpowers”.

The actor said: “The fact that I got to teleport was such a dream come true. And yes, it does come with a catch that he needs to be naked. But I think that that’s so appropriate for our show and so appropriate for Hughie.

“Like, he finally gets this amazing power, but it has this really embarrassing twist. Hughie can never just have, like, a straight up win. It’s a lot of half wins… But you know, whatever, I’m a superhero. If I got to be naked to do it, whatever. That’s going to come out sounding weird, but you got it.”

The Boys can be streamed now on Prime Video.