The Boys’ Erin Moriarty Dissects Her Performer of the Week Episode, Reveals Heath Ledger Inspiration

The Boys star Erin Moriarty looked to a surprising source of inspiration for her performance as a shapeshifter masquerading as Annie in the show’s Season 4 finale.

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“I watched Heath Ledger in [ The Dark Knight ]. So brilliant, and he was only 27 or 26 when he shot that, which is even more insane to me. But I needed to, literally, watch people transcend their physicality [to] know I could do it,” Moriarty tells TVLine’s Keisha Hatchett at San Diego Comic-Con.

The eventful episode called for Moriarty to pull double duty as Annie and the shapeshifter pretending to be her, and featured complicated fight sequences and lengthy, emotional confrontations between the two characters where the actress had to play opposite herself. The impressive end-product took “a lot of prep,” Moriarty says, but it was worth it. (After all, it did earn her TVLine’s Performer of the Week honor.)

“I would tape myself via my phone in my house for hours on end, and then fast forward it to observe my own mannerisms, because so many of us have mannerisms we’re not even aware that we’re, like, exhibiting, and that was really humbling,” Moriarty says of her process.the

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The actress also weighed in on Annie and boyfriend Hughie’s rollercoaster of a season, which included an engagement — but it was between Hughie and the fake Annie! Although the couple seemed to have moved past that awkward betrayal by the end of the finale, Moriarty is hoping for a proposal do-over in the fifth and final season.

“Even though I played the shifter role, I’m mad on [Annie’s] behalf not because of the reasons she’s mad, but because I want to have a moment for her,” Moriarty explains. “I’m like, ‘What a beautiful moment.’ We’ve all been waiting for that moment between those two, and I want her to experience it, earnestly… But I hope it doesn’t come about as an obligation because it happened previously. I hope it happens in a really beautiful, organic way that is pure to the nature of how they’ve been since the beginning, which is earnest and just good and well motivated and organic in terms of their chemistry.”

Press PLAY above to watch TVLine’s full interview with Moriarty, then check out more of our The Boys Comic-Con videos .

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