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Karl Urban looks back on his 20+ years as a genre icon [Ep #84]
Karl Urban has spent his entire career starring in genre entertainment. He's featured in high fantasy sagas like The Lord of the Rings and science fiction flicks such as the new Star Trek trilogy, with stops in gritty neo-future cop dramas like Dredd and superhero flicks such as Thor: Rangarok. The guy even began his career with a recurring role in Xena: Warrior Princess, a fitting beginning for an actor whose arc mirrors the rise of science fiction and fantasy's standing in the Hollywood hierarchy.
Now, after two decades playing those noble (and sometimes silly) heroes, Urban is inverting and taking the piss out of the whole genre with his latest project, The Boys, on Amazon Prime.
Urban stars as Billy Butcher in this adaptation of Garth Ennis' graphic novel, about a freelance team of antihero vigilantes trying to keep corrupt, corporate superheroes in check. Coming off the extravaganza that was Avengers: Endgame, which positions superheroes as saviors, The Boys is extra subversive, and Urban was excited to sink his teeth into the twisted premise and characters.
"One of the things that I responded to in the scripts that I read was how he assembles the Boys," Urban says in the latest episode of The Fandom Files. "He gets the gang back together, and it's through manipulating and lying and coercion, and that's a lot of fun to play."
Urban also spoke about a number of the other big points on his filmography and addressed whether he had any desire to return to the world of Star Trek on TV, and whether we'd ever see a Dredd sequel. Listen below!
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