Warning: This story contains major spoilers for The Boys Season 5, Episode 5. Please proceed with caution!
Valorie Curry joined up with The Boys in Season 4 as Misty Tucker Gray, aka Firecracker, the god-fearing member of The Seven. She’s an alt-right influencer and conspiracy theorist who has the ability to create sparks via snapping her fingers. In the fifth and final season of Prime Video‘s anti-superhero show, her faith is pushed to its limits when Homelander (Antony Starr) begins seeing himself as a god… or the God.
Curry tells Gold Derby that Firecracker “hated” the idea of worshipping her corrupt supe leader. Even though she eventually comes around to it, it’s too late for Homelander’s liking, and he murders her by impaling her head on a marble eagle wing. She says the supervillain has become “absolutely bats–t crazy.”
Looking back on her two seasons of The Boys, Curry reveals that playing the conflicted Firecracker “changed” her as an actor. She also explains how the show’s political parallels to real-world issues continue to “shock” her as every new episode rolls out.
Read on for our full postmortem interview with Valorie Curry.
Gold Derby: What was your reaction when you first learned that Firecracker would be dying in the fifth episode?
I knew from the time I joined the show that Firecracker was going to die — eventually. One of the tropes that Eric Kripke talked about wanting to explore with her was the saying “the leopards won’t eat my face.” That was going around a lot at the time, and eventually the leopards always eat their faces. Particularly, women who are trying to access power through proximity to power are the most disposable in these kinds of situations. And so, it was inevitable.
So did Firecracker survive longer than you thought she would?
I’m going to be honest: I didn’t think she was going to make it to Episode 5, because she was looking pretty rough by the end of Season 4. I actually asked Eric, “Am I the first one out in Episode 1?” [laughs] I was really, really grateful that I wasn’t. She didn’t die as a result of the medications, or the breastfeeding. It was a personal arc in terms of her convictions. I was really grateful for that.
How much did Firecracker hate having to tell Homelander that he was essentially her new God? She was conflicted on that issue for a couple of episodes.
She hated it. She hated it a lot. It’s unclear how much Firecracker really believes the things she says, because she will literally say anything in order to appeal to or appease the people in whatever room she’s in. It doesn’t really faze her or get to her very much because she’s so performative. But this was a different ask. It’s testing the idea of, “How much can I just say the thing, and it doesn’t touch the inside of me?” Which obviously wasn’t true.
How did Firecracker and Homelander’s relationship change over these two seasons?
Her vision of Homelander has crumbled since the day she got to Vought. She really believed he was this embodiment of goodness and of all of her ideals. But she comes to find out, not only is he not that, he is dangerous, he is mercurial, and he’s kind of stupid. And now he’s absolutely bats–t crazy. There’s this feeling of panic, because she’s gotten so close and involved with this person and this system of power that revolves around him. When you realize that it’s all so unstable, what do you do?
At the same time Homelander was seeing himself as a god, the U.S. president posted a meme in which he was depicted as godlike. Can you speak to the timeliness of The Boys in terms of politics?
I have been shocked watching every episode of this season as they’ve come out in the context of our times. They wrote these things two years ago. We shot it over a year ago. I think I saw Kripke say recently that they were satirizing current politics, society, corporations, and everything, just like they always have. But in order to try to not be too on the nose, they wrote the worst possible case scenario and the craziest, most outlandish things they could imagine, so that it would be this sort of a clowning of what was happening. Unfortunately, we are seeing something that is parallel to what they perceived as the worst possible scenario. And that’s really upsetting and depressing.
What will you miss the most about playing this character?
I have never been given permission to play a character that is so much before. I’ve always played characters that are very grounded, and sort of subtle. Even in maybe a comedic world, they’re the human-grounded element. I got to stretch myself playing Firecracker, because she’s so performative. I got to explore a different way of connecting to a character where it is much more based on the external, with an outside-in approach. It’s changed me as an actor, and I’ve found new muscles I didn’t know I had.
Season 5 of The Boys streams every Wednesday on Prime Video until the May 20 series finale. Be sure to check out Gold Derby’s full coverage:
