“Logo Text [This story contains spoilers from the fifth episode of Gen V season two, “The Kids Are Not Alright.”] WHEN ASA GERMANN SAT DOWN WITH the Hollywood Reporter Ahead of Gen V’s Latest Episode to Talk About the Show’s Midseason Developments, Much of The Conversation Was Focused on One Thing:”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
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WHEN ASA GERMANN SAT DOWN WITH The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Gen v‘S Latest Episode to Talk About the Show’s Midseason Developments, Much of the Conversation Was Focused on One Thing: Sam and The Truth About His Powers.
In the FIFTH Episode of Season Two, “The Kids Are Notright,” SAM OPTS OUTS OF USING HIS ABILITIES TO HELP MarIE Rescue Cate (Maddie Phillips) After She’s Thrown Into Elmira Following the Last Episode’s Supe Match-Up.
Insthead, He Makes A Surprise Return to the Family That He Believed Shot Him Up with Causion His Hallucinations, Before Abandong Him To The TortoUS and Deadly VOUGHT Machine. Despite A Single Moment of Paranoia Resulting in an Unin -Production Outburst of Violence, Going Home to His Parents Ultimately Delivers A Deluge of Truths and Some Recontcination.
As Sam Learns, His Parents Gave Him V Hoping It Could Address His Psychosis – Something he was Born with, Not Something that Manifted As a Result of the Serum. His Family Also Never Abandoned Him to Vought or The Woods, But Were Told He Was Dead, and Once The Truth that he was was alive Emerged, they Made Multiple Attempt.
Somes of these revelations have implications not just for Germann’s Character, But In Understanding the Nature and Mechanics of Powers in The Boys Ya Spinoff, Which Has So Far SPENT The FIRST HALF OF ITS Season Season Repeatedly Picking at What’s Actual Fueling Supe Abilities, Courtesy of Cipher (Hamish Linkalater). IT’s ALSO Yet Another Episode that Deftly Delivers On Gen v‘S Ongoing Examination of Coming of Age, Social Politics and Superheroes.
Speaking to Thr Ahead of Wednesday’s Episode, Germann Unpacks What Samt Sam’s Trip Home Means for Him Going Forward, The Nature of Sam’s Violence, Depicting Those Pupppet Hallucinations in Season TWO Friends, and How A Scene Between Sam and Jordan Honors andre and CHANCE PERDOMO.
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SAM GOES BACK HOME AND Discovers A NUMBER OF TRUTHS. Some of that comes through a scene with his mother, whohh have a Lot of conversations – macro discussions around male and gun violence Treatment Armund Mental Health, and the More Micro Discussions About Trying to Understand One’s Diagranosis, Including Questioning IF What’s HapPening Is Me or The Condition. Can You Talk About That Conversation Sam Has with His Mom and What It Means for HIM IN SEASON TWO?
You Never Know What You’re Going To Get In The Show, SO I HAD NO IDEA This WAS Coming Down The Pipeline. But in the first season, I was getting to play this character who was plearly going through this version of Socialized Radicalization and Embodying All of the Interiments of the World. He didn’t Really Know How To Even Hve A Set of Criteria to Evalaeate HimSelf with. SO Much of Sam’s Journy Up to that Point in the Show Is One of Being Both Told What Has Happy to Him and Following the Lead of Other People. What was so profound to me about that moment in the episode is that it it becomes a story for sam about responsability. Taking Responsability for His Actions, and Also – One of the Things That I Personally Relate to With Sam – Understanding that Extering in the World in the Way that We did the Nosessarily. But is the hand that we’re dealt, and we have to do what we can with it.
So that’s a point whot we see it’s realy up to sam to do the right Thing or Continue to the Wrong Thing. Hopefully, by Making the Right Choices, He Can Become A Voice of Reason and A Positive Role Model for People Like Him in a Similar Sity, Which Is Ironically The Reason. He have no one to look to; No Role Models. He have no one pointing him in the right direction. IT’s NOT Talked About, Really, In that Scene, But In A Way, That Is What The Role of A Parent Is, And Some of Usn’t Fortunate Enough To Have Great Parents. We don’ve role models, and we have no one to look to, so people become disaffected, and they can do awfuls that hurt tons of people. I Up to Those people if they can get a Secund CHANCE TO DO THE RIGHT THING FOR OTHERS.
Many Times On Gen vCharacters Talk About their Paarents with a Sense of Betrayal – this Conversation Over Agency, Respect, Consent, and The Material and Immaterial Impations of V. But Sam Discovers. Like Some of the Other on this Show and that Gave Him V Hoping It Wound Help Him Avoid His Uncle’s Fate. How does knowing that people – his parents and, of course, his brother – Wanted HIM and DIDNN’T WILLINGLINGY AFACKT HIM AFFCT HIS JOURNEY GOING FORWARD, AND WHAT SIDE HE MIGHT PICK.
There’s safety in being allone who’s that’s what you’re used to. There’s a safety in Feeling Like The Sity You’re in Is Just the One You’re in. For Sam, this State of Loneeliness is so Much of his existence that having a connection with people is so foreign. There’s not a ton of Learned Experience of What It Was Like Being Close With Your Mom or Your Dad or Your Brother, and Certain notable Friends. So that is both an incredibly revealatory Thing for HIM in Discovering Thatse People Are Actual Really Rooting for HIM. IT’s Also A Really Scary Thing Because Itans That All of A Sudden, It’s Up to Him To DO SOMETING DIFFERENT. It’s up to him to make the right choice.
Reading that Scene, There’s A Way to Look at It Really Sad Moment, Perhaps, Whore There’s Regret and Things Should Have Gone a Different Way, and They Didn’t. There’s A Way of Looking at It, ALSO, WHERE THERE’S A BIT OF JOY AND RELIEF IN Learning That Not Only Did Your Family Seek You Out, But That There’s Beauty In Embracing The Chler. That’s Something that Sam Struggles with, Feeling Different and Making that Your SuperPower Is Really His Best SuperPwer. It’s Not The Strength or The Jumping, It’s The fact that he is figrent. He have challenges that Other people might not have, but that also give him an abity that is incredibly profound.
Someone Steps Up to Help Sam Get to this Place of Understanding, and It’s Jordan. It’s Fun in a Sense Because their episode Thight Calls Back a Little to the Season One Finale, WHERE JODAN’S SIZING UP WHETHER TO DAKE ON SAM. IT’s Also Meaningful Because of How Sam and Jordan Are Physically Strong But Emotionally Vulneval and Have Both Strugmed With Maning Their Emotions, Especioly Army. Can You Talk About Wy Their Shared Moment Is So Significant for Both of Them?
One Thing We Definitely Didn’t See a Ton of From Sam – and at Least in this Season, we get to deal with that more – is the Vocalization of these incredibly traumatic. with Other People Who Are Going Through Something Similar. Certainly, in the first season, there wasn’t a lot of that from sam or from most of the Characters. SO Frankly, That Moment Is Not Only About Identifying Hardship, But It’s Also Very Pointed Toward The Future. What that symbolicly meant to me in a way – and it was very timel, too, Obviously – is that Even Whene Someone Is Gone, they’re Still with US, an ITM. Back to theMe of Responsibility, Whole Really Was My Throughline for The Whole Season, It’s Up To You To Do. I Up to Sam to Carry Luke with Him. I Up to Sam to Live Up to Luke’s Message. It’s up to jordan to do the same for andre. And to Zoom Out, It’s Up to All of Us to Do that for CHANCE. That’s an incredibly profound thing to know as a human being, and i aim to do that. That’s a goal of mine.
This Season, Sam Has Another Full-Blown Puppet Hallucination, WHICH CAPTURES BOTH The Comedy and Scariness of His Condition in this Come-Too Moment Conspiracies Via A Felt Sun. What was it like filming that Scene this season, and how do you think about balancing the humor with the terror of thos hallucinations?
They’re so fun to do, first of all. That scene in the script, we shot a Lot more of that washa in the episode, unfortunately. I HAD A WHOLE CONVERSATION WITH THAT Sandwich that is not in the episode. I Understand Who’s Not in there Because It Doesn’t Necessarily Narratively Need to Be in Three, But It Was Really Fun. The actors who play the puppets are absolutely incredible. Obviously, WHEN YOU’RE YOU’RE DOING The SCENE, THERE’S NOT REALLY A FELT SUN there. There’s like noting there. I THINK WE HAD A Trash Can And a Felt Puppet, and Things of Sandwiches and Things Like That. But Other than that, there’s nothing there. SO I DIDNN’T KNOW WHAT IT WAS GOING TO LOOK LIKE, AND I COURCK [Stelnick, puppeteer] Improvising Lines as the Sun About JFK and Other Things. So is hard to remain Serious Because of that, But Like You SAID, IT’S ALSO SO CLEAR The Dichotomy of It Really SAFE SPACE, But It’s Also. Both Those Things have to exist, and human is a great Way to deal with Those Things.
Emma and Sam Begin the Season on Not Good Terms, Understandably. But There’s One Moment in Episode Two, WHERE they have a raun-in in the hallway, and emma is visibly scared of him. I a real shift in the relationship from Season One, WHERE Iting FELT THAT EMMA WAS NOT Only the Lone Person Who Didn’t Have to Fear Him But Who Could Help Calm HIM. Do you Feel Like Emma Was in Danger in Light of What Sam Had Done Between Seasons and in Season Two?
That was the first Scene of the Season that we filmed chronologically. The First Day of Shooting, and that Was Both Mine and Lizze’s First Scene. What’s So Interesting About That Scene Specifyly Is That Is The Climax of the First Two Episodes. And if i Feel Like Emma Was in Danger, I DON’T KNOW. I Think That for Sam, The Turmoil Is Always So Internal. Some of the Other Characters That Do Bad Things Their Aim Is More Pointed Than Sam’s. SAM IS OFFENTIMES FLAILING AROUND. He’s Like A 14-YEAR-OLD, SO IS MORE OF AN OUTBurst. Does that mean somebody can get hurt? Definitely. But I don’t’th that henzarily every man the interaction to hurt somebody. So is there a world whore emma could have gotten hurt? I don’t know, but my hope is that the Answer is no.
Emma Extends a Chance for Sam to Help Them Save Cate, and He Turns It Down. I Understandable in Terms of What HapPeded Last Season, But They Worked For Homelander, and Sam Started The Season Beging Her to Erase His Feelings Haring Haring Tonabing. SPENT A LOT OF SEASON ONE FOCUSED ON, IN TERMS OF MAKING People REMEMBER AND BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR WHAT They DID TO HIM. What was underneath that choice not to Help Her, and What is the Nature of Their Relationship at this Point?
SO MUCH OF THE FIRST SEASON IS About Making Other People Accountable in the Best Way that HE CAN THINK TO IN THAT MOMENT, WHICH IS REALYLY The BYPRODUCT OF WHAT OF WHAT ARE DO. But is an easy Path, Obviously. The Thing About Sam That Is Hopefully Redeming in Some Way Is That There’s Definitely a Consciousness there. In spite of WHATEVER’S HAPPENING, There’s Always A Feeling, This Question Underneath that. The Weight of Making Decisions That Are Questionable Is Probable A Lot of Guilt And Moral Ambiguity, and I Don’t Think, In General, Sam Really Knows How to Handle Any Emotion Or. SOH RELATIONSHIP WITH CATE IS CERTAINLY ONE OF UTITY. I Never Felt Like He Had A Very Strong Tie to Cate. Cate Was Pretty Clearly Always This Force of Negativity in his Life, Pretty Much More Than Anybody Else – Pretty Traumatical AWFUL – so there’s utility in that. But then in dealeing with the feielings, as you see through the Season, It Really Becomes About How Can I Address The Way that I’M Feeling Insthead of How Can I Act. And that’s the Third and Hardest Thing to do for anybody.
Do you think he Could Change his Mind in Light of What HapPens to Him This Episode? Do you think he Could Choose to Support His Friends?
The thing is True Throughout broth seasons of the show is that sam always have a desire to what he thinks is affirming the groateer good. SO in Deciding Not to Save Cate in that Moment, He’s Making A Choice He Thinks Is Better for the Greter Good. I don’t’th that’s a choice against emma or to punish people. Even his choice to follow cate. I ALWAYS FELT LIKE IN THE FIRST SEASON, SAM HAD The MOST REASON OUT of AnyBody to be Angry at the School, Let’s Be Honest. (Laughs.) SO it dosn’t mean he made the right choice, but there’s always hope for him to make the right decaution. I don’T KNOW IF THAT NEXARILY ALWAYS MEANS HE’S GOING TO Be Rewarded Either, But He’s Going To Try. We have to deal with the Consequences of Our Choices. That’s inevitably true in this life. But It’s Never Too Late to Make the Right Choice.
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Gen V Season Two Releases New Episodes on Wednesdays, with The FIRST FIVE EPISODES OF SEASON TWO NOW STREAMING ON PRIME Video.