Warning: This story contains major spoilers for Season 5 of The Boys. Please proceed with caution!
For the first four seasons of Prime Video’s superhero show, Karen Fukuhara acted in silence as her character, Kimiko Miyashiro/The Female, communicated via nonverbal language techniques. But all of that changed in Season 5, as the fan-fave supe underwent speech therapy (and watched loads of TikTok) to finally reclaim her speaking voice.
“Finding her voice and figuring out what it’s like to be a part of the speaking world was a huge challenge for me,” Fukuhara tells Gold Derby. In prior episodes, Kimiko, the ass-kicking, virtually impervious member of the Boys team, used sign language and even sang in a fantasy musical number.
“I’ve memorized dialogue before for the character because I was doing the sign language and that was basically word for word, coming up with different signs with my sign language coach,” says Fukuhara. “So learning new lines was not anything that I hadn’t done before.”
Kimiko’s first line of dialogue comes about a third of the way through the Season 5 premiere. “Oh, wow, your skin is so oily, like huggin’ a McRib,” she says after embracing Erin Moriarty’s Annie. Kimiko explains that her voice finally returned as the result of “f–king speech therapy, and f–king therapy-therapy, and so much f–king TikTok.”
And once Kimiko starts speaking, she doesn’t stop… and practically everything she says is unfiltered.
The big talking twist wasn’t just something that Fukuhara needed to wrap her head around. Several members of The Boys cast also weighed in about the suddenly chatter Kimiko.
Valorie Curry (Firecracker): It’s so exciting to see one more facet of Karen as a performer. She’s so unbelievable. What she’s done is so impressive. She works five times harder than any of the rest of us because she’s been in stunt training and sign training. Then to add on top of it, now we get to see this completely new side to her. She’d found all these ways to express herself, but we couldn’t finish [the show] without actually letting Kimiko speak and hearing her voice. It’s one more element that Karen gets to bring to her performance, which is fantastic.
Nathan Mitchell (Black Noir): What I love about Kimiko this season is she hasn’t had to speak for a very long time, if ever, and we see her speaking in such an unfiltered way. Anyone using language or speaking can’t just go out and say exactly what they’re thinking, and Kimiko does. That’s a really interesting element to bring to the show and to the Boys, and I think that’s a really fun choice that the writers made and she got to play.
Karl Urban (Billy Butcher): Often the part of the day I enjoyed the most was watching Karen give her nonverbal reactions to whatever was happening in the scene, and this season, she literally became my favorite part of every day. Not only does she continue to do that and deliver it in spades, but then also was given the most crazy dialogue to say. It was so much fun to see that character have this sort of verbal stream of consciousness ramble out. She’s so good at what she does.
Jack Quaid (Hughie Campbell): She is unbelievably talented, and a joy to watch. Often we’re doing scenes with the five — or, I guess now, six — of us hanging out, and discussing a plan, and the fact that Karen now has a voice in those scenes made them so much more alive and dynamic. She’s just an immense talent. She did so much for so long without her voice, and now that she is using it, it’s incredible.
Erin Moriarty (Annie January/Starlight): From a personal and selfish perspective, I love watching Karen work and love watching her speak finally. Their dynamic is so fun to explore and their sisterhood is such an important part of the show. The fact that now Kimiko can communicate in an entirely new way adds to that dynamic. It was really cool to explore how their relationship changed and deepened with her new ability to speak. It was really fun.
Season 5 of The Boys streams every Wednesday on Prime Video until the May 20 series finale. See what the cast had to say about losing an original character in the season premiere.
