Did the sound of Ambrosius’ voice in The Boys Season 4 premiere sound familiar to you? If so, it’s probably because The Deep’s octopus lover was brought to life by none other than Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton ( Michael Clayton, Doctor Strange ).
The Deep has several conversations with Ambrosius over the course of the new season’s first three episodes (now streaming) which are carried out in secret. Hidden away in a tank in Deep’s closet, Ambrosius argues that they should run away together in Episode 1, then pleads with him to let her out of the shadows in Episode 3. They haven’t been intimate in over a week, she notes. With Swinton’s soft, dulcet tones giving voice to Ambrosius, the exchanges are strange yet believably confessional, painting a real relationship between the octopus and the supe.
“We just knew that when Ambrosius was going to be a character, we wanted, like, the classiest, biggest, Oscar-winning-est British actress we could find, and that’s a pretty small list,” showrunner Eric Kripke tells TVLine in the above video. “So we reached out to Tilda, and to her everlasting credit, she heard this ridiculous idea about playing an octopus, and she jumped at it, and she thought it would be so much fun.”
“She came into the recording booth, and I was there, and to hear the highest possible caliber actress, throwing herself wholeheartedly into the dumbest s–t was, honestly, one of the best professional days of my life,” Kripke adds.
It’s not every day that someone like Swinton gets asked to voice a mollusc who is getting it on with a human. But of course, someone with Swinton’s talent “instinctually already knew how to play it, which was to play Ambrosius as erudite and intelligent and graceful as possible,” Kripke describes.
Still, Swinton and Kripke discussed the character “a little bit, and I had just said, ‘The thing about Ambrosius is she’s Deep’s best shot at happiness, but he’s too self-centered and self-hating to take it,'” Kripke shares.
“What I really love about it is the warmth,” Kripke says of Swinton’s portrayal. “Like, she’s so deeply in love with The Deep, and that’s what I love about it.”
As for Chace Crawford, who plays The Deep, he “started laughing” when he learned who would voice his love interest, the actor says. “I’m like, ‘That’s the funniest thing in the world. Oh, my God, she’s doing it. That’s amazing!’ And hats off to her for having such a great sense of humor about it, because it’s, obviously, such a funny, ridiculous scene and a character to play… For her to come on and do that is just, like, incredible.”
Despite their characters’ closeness, Crawford and Swinton never crossed paths during production. In fact, the casting came as quite a surprise to Crawford, who “had no idea until, like, not that long ago, actually, that she was the voice of Ambrosius,” he reveals. While shooting The Deep and Ambrosius’ scenes, “on the day, it’s just kind of tennis balls and X marks, and they had a reader kind of reading the lines with me.”
Technicalities aside, “it was a blast. It was a lot of fun doing it, and so, I can’t wait to see how it turned out,” Crawford adds.
Swinton wasn’t the only big name Hollywood star to make a cameo during the new season: Will Ferrell also appeared in a trailer for A-Train’s new movie, Training A-Train , as the supe’s coach.
“Will came together because I was chatting with him and his producing partner a little bit at the time about potentially writing a screenplay, and so, we had a meeting, and we were emailing a little bit right around when this part came out,” Kripke shares. “[Writer/producer] Jess Chou wrote it in the script as Huge Hollywood Star. But we weren’t sure who it would be yet. And so, I reached out to him and said, ‘Hey, do you want to come up to Toronto and play around for 30 hours?’ and he was game, and he was so gracious.”
“The day they shot, the conditions were miserable. It was freezing sideways rain,” Kripke continues, “and I felt so bad that I dragged him into this nightmare of a shoot. But he just could not have been kinder and more gracious to the crew and just, like, such a gentleman through a really hard shoot. He’s the best.”
Press PLAY above to watch Kripke and Crawford talk about the big cameos, then hit the comments with your thoughts on the surprise appearances.
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