Worried A-Train Won’t Survive ‘The Boys’? So Is the Actor Who Plays Him

In the universe of The Boys, redemption arcs usually aren’t a thing, as the dark fate of the Deep’s octopus lover this season makes clear. But Jessie T. Usher‘s fastest man alive, A-Train, whose impenetrable arrogance has been melting away season by season, looks to be a major exception. With the finale of Season Four streaming now, Prince reflects on playing one of the show’s most nuanced characters, in an interview conducted for our in-depth feature on The Boys.

You have one of the most unpredictable character arcs on the show, and it seems like you’re ending up as one of the rare sympathetic characters. How are you feeling about where it’s going?
I think the process of trying to earn people’s sympathy is more fun. I really enjoyed the first two seasons of just being the antagonist, the guy that you love to hate. They were showing even Homelander’s human side a lot earlier than they showed A-Train’s human side. He was just, like, a puppet. He seemed like his intention was always just to do whatever he was told and he didn’t care. But then we introduced his family dynamic a little bit more and brought back the things that made him human. And sympathy is within reach. 

I was a little worried they were going to kill you off last season.
Yeah, A-Train almost died every season [laughs]. At the beginning of the season, nobody really knows who’s gonna die. As the story starts to develop in the writers room, eventually you may or may not get a call. And there’s been a couple of times where I didn’t get that call, but I was reading the pages like, “Wait a minute, hold on! What’s happening?” Last season, his heart stops. I’m like, “That’s it!” And then he wakes up in a hospital with a new heart. And you’re just like, “Whoa, so even death isn’t a way out.” Which is something that also plays into his psyche. 

Were there models out in the world of that sort of arrogant, disconnected guy he was in the beginning?
I always felt like really cocky athletes have that same persona. When you see guys come out of college or whatever, and they’re on top of their game, and they’re killing it in their rookie year — in the NBA they show them walking through the tunnel leading up to the game, and it’s like they don’t even see people. They’re just above the world. And I saw that and I’m like, “That’s what I think A-train is.”

It’s funny that the same actor, Nathan Mitchell, is still playing Black Noir even though it’s supposed to be an entirely different character inside the suit this season.
I finally get to act with him! Being able to speak to him and engage with him and [take] my frustrations out on him is weird, because I’m familiar with this person, but I have to pretend that it’s someone else. That was a really interesting thing to play around with on set. I’d never been a part of something where you lose a character and then gain what’s supposed to be a new character, but he’s played by the same person. It’s crazy, right? It’s a weird thing to work with. 

What have you taken away from all the insane interactions you’ve had to have with Antony Starr as Homelander over the years?
Oh my goodness. You don’t mess with Antony, that’s for sure. You just don’t mess with Homelander, you really don’t. Antony does such a great job of creating realism in very bizarre scenarios. He does a wonderful job of making you feel fear even when you know who’s in the suit. His demeanor, everything changes about him when he’s in the suit and playing those things out. It’ll be so weird, because we were just 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 regardless of what the relationship is, right then and there it just seems so life-or-death.

Is he genuinely frightening when he’s in your face like that?
Nah, he’s not genuinely frightening, man, no. Sometimes he might get there, slightly, but then they’ll yell cut and his real accent comes out and that’s my friend. But I’ve noticed how frightening he is to other people, as the show gained more popularity and we have day players, background actors, and things like that. When Antony walks on set, people actually treat him like Homelander. And I’m like, that’s convincing right there. If they are walking down the hall, they will spread like the Red Sea because he’s coming through. And that’s what makes him so great at this job.

Do people somehow expect you to be able to be a fast runner in real life?
I get asked to race almost every day. I’m like, “If you ran track, you’re gonna beat me, bro.” 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 one for years. I’m like, “No.” I don’t even run on the treadmill. I would do anything but run for cardio. I was thrilled to find out that most of my running is going to happen in post-production. They’re like, just start and stop. I’m like, “Great. I can do that. No problem.”

I guess it’s better to be challenged to a race than a fight, at least.
Don’t come up and challenge me as a tough guy either! [Laughs.] ’Cause I’m not doing that either. I did meet this one kid who basically turned his entire high-school life around because of A-Train and running. He loved the character so much, he decided to run cross-country and he took his school to the championship that year.  And he asked me one day, “Can we run a race?” And I was like, “You know what? I might actually run with this kid. He seems cool.”

The show parodies Hollywood as brutally as it does politics. The Will Ferrell scene this season was such a sharp parody of Hollywood’s racial condescension.
The Boys will throw it right in your face and call it what it is and make fun of it. And we’re gonna do it with an icon. And it just happened to be Will Ferrell. And, oh my gosh, was he so funny on set. It was incredible. Such a good day.

There’s that interesting moment where the director tries to un-correct A-Train’s grammar.
Yeah, interestingly enough, throughout my career, I’ve had writers come up to me and have that conversation with me:  “Look, we want to write for your voice and we want to make it sound more like you or whatever.” And then I’m like “This is what I would say.” And they’re like, “You sure?”  Because I actually don’t use bad grammar, or at least in that scenario. It’s hard to explain the nuances. Sometimes they want an urban thing, and I’m like, “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 say, “Look, this is a real thing. People can relate. Can we find a way to incorporate this into the show?” And he does a very good job of finding ways to put it in.”

Chace Crawford told me his one hope is that the Deep survives the show. Is that how you’re thinking as well? Do you feel a little safer now that A-Train has been redeeming himself?
Just because I know where A-Train came from and all the things that he’s done in his past, I think that’s just wishful thinking. I don’t see a clean exit for him. At the same time, I would have been satisfied before as a viewer to see him get what’s coming to him. But now I think we’ve had enough time seeing him try to face what he’s done where if he does make a turnaround, like, OK, it’s justifiable. 

Finally, how does your career 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 gonna grow up to be a culinary artist. I was like, “I’m gonna be a cook.” That’s what I went to school for. I quit acting multiple times so that I could pursue that and then I gave acting a little bit more and a little bit more, and now here we are. And I’m like, “Dang, man, whatever happened to the filet mignon?” And this is way far out of the box from where I saw even just my acting career going. I was a very dramatic actor in my younger years. But now I’m on this show where I wear this super-suit, but I’m getting all of the elements that I had fallen in love with, in a show that is this bizarre. If you want to make God laugh, make a plan. That’s what happened with me. I was like, “This is what I’m gonna do.” He’s like, “Nah, put this suit on.” [Laughs.]