The Boys: Diabolical Executive Producer Breaks Down Premiere Inspirations

An executive producer for The Boys Presents: Diabolical broke down what inspired the premiere episode. In an interview with the A.V. Club, showrunner Simon Racioppa took a look at a bunch of the series’ entries. “Laser Baby’s Day Out” kicks off Diabolical with a very throwback adventure with a young superpowered kid. It’s a mostly silent entry with sound effects doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Fans of animation are no stranger to this technique after programs like Bojack Horseman have used it to great effect in recent years. Apparently writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg went all the way back to Looney Tunes for this one. Clearly it’s resonated with audiences as fans of The Boys have been very approving of these early episodes of the Amazon spinoff series. Check out what he had to say about the process down below.

“That was an homage to all the cartoons we watched growing up. Early on, working with Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] on that, we decided to actually take out all the dialogue. There’s one word of dialogue in the whole piece, when she says “Dada” at the end; everything else is all just sounds and visuals. So part of the fun of that was just being like, “OK, if that’s what we’re going to do, how hard can we go? Let’s go as far as we can.” 

“So we found Crystal Chesney-Thompson and Derek Thompson, the two directors on that piece, who actually do Looney Tunes-style animation. That’s their thing. They’re old school like that. And we found a studio who did animation on Animaniacs and Tom And Jerry and stuff like that, who do that kind of animation. So Crystal and Derek then found the designers they knew who do those kinds of designs and those kind of old Disney and Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. cartoons.”

Showrunner Eric Kripke talked to Variety about the boundaries they were able to push with Diabolical. That means a lot considering how adventurous The Boys can get.

“We can try things with these and be completely nuts with form and different style,” Kripke explained. “I love that shit for being able to really hopscotch and have radically different styles and just try things that are the craziest things we possibly can — even a little too crazy for the show because it’s animation and you can take it so much further with animation than you can with live-action. That part has been a blast. We look at it like, what ideas can we get out of it and how far can we push this whole universe? I think the animated version gives us a chance to do that.”

Have you checked out Diabolical yet? Let us know down in the comments!