Warning: Spoilers for The Boys season 4.
Claudia Doumit often feels like she’s in a very exclusive book club. When the cast of Prime Video’s hit series The Boys receives the next round of scripts from showrunner Eric Kripke, the group chat goes nuts. You see, they’re only given their character’s basic arc at the beginning of the season, and more information is drip-fed as filming commences.
“It’s so funny because not everyone has read the script at the same time,” she tells StyleCaster. “They’ll say, ‘You won’t believe how it ends for you,’ so it’s really exciting … Every cast member is so enthralled with what’s essentially the next installment in our book club.”
As Congresswoman Victoria Neuman, Doumit joined the cast as somewhat of a secret antagonist. She’s originally portrayed as an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-like figure—one hell-bent on dismantling Vought, regulating Supes, and reclaiming America for us regular folk. In the season 2 finale, though, there’s a huge twist: She’s a supe! Not only that but the head-popper from the congressional hearing.
The following season, Vicky’s powers remain secret from the public—they have to be because she teams up with Hughie (Jack Quaid) at the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs to regulate supe activity. We learn that Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito), the former CEO of Vought International, is Vicky’s adoptive father and he injected her with Compound V as a child. He’s eventually arrested for keeping classified documents from Vought and it’s Vicky who puts him behind bars.
Going into season 4, Doumit is a full-blown threat, though certainly not without her weaknesses. “She’s incredibly manipulative,” says Doumit. “She operates in the shadows. And she is a character that wears many masks. So to be able to see the cracks start to come through—those masks are such a gift as an actor and it’s just wonderful to explore.” Is she a villain? It’s just not that simple.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Your character’s relationship shifts a little bit in this season because Stan Edgar didn’t know Vicky shot up her daughter, Zoey, with Compound V. Can you speak to that?
I think it’s really interesting because where we left it off in season three, there was such a great loss in that relationship and heartbreak on both sides.
But also, Victoria Neuman has always had the safety net of Stan Edgar, and this season, she very much does not have that safety net, so she’s finding out what it’s like to go out into the world on her own. It’s something that she wanted, it’s something that she thought she’d be better at, but she’s very quickly realizing that that’s not the case. She’s walked into a shitstorm. So it’s quite hard for her to navigate through that without Stan. And it only gets worse and worse.
Vicky and Stan have a reunion in episode 5. After learning she dosed her daughter with V, Stan strikes a deal with The Boys to take down Vicky in return for his freedom. It’s another betrayal.
She’s still quite hurt. She still doesn’t trust him, and rightfully so, because he’s taken the very people who want to kill her to a top-secret facility where she’s working on a virus to kill supes. It’s it’s quite a chaotic reunion.
I think Neuman seeks out control and positions of power to feel safe and secure, which is a really interesting thing when it comes to someone who has the ability to pop someone’s head.
Claudia Doumit
And we knew your character was coming because everyone got nosebleeds.
It’s always a fun little precursor to whenever I get to make an entrance [laughs]. In the arc of this episode, she comes back to Stan Edgar. And I think that has to do with the fact that she’s lost Sameer, the father of her child and the only man she’s ever loved. I think she feels very lost at the end of that episode and then detached, like she has nowhere else to turn. And I think that’s when a lot of kids go home.
It’s interesting you phrase it that way because Homelander (played by Antony Starr) went home in the previous episode, butchering all but one scientist responsible for his creation. There are a lot of parallels to draw between Vicky and Homelander.
I think that too! I’ve said that many times. There’s a far deeper understanding between Neuman and Homelander and how their psyches operate. They’re the only two supes who have grown up as test subjects, the difference is that Neuman got to go to boarding school, but Edgar still used her like a lab rat.
It’s a different environment, sure, but the same test. Neuman has just had this false backdrop of normalcy. But between the two of them, that’s how they ended up. She’s had a father figure, and she’s had some sense of human experience, whereas Homelander has been locked in this underground space for years and years.
In this episode, we meet Vicky’s husband and suped-up farm animals. Can you talk me through the mechanics of the chicken fight?
It’s really funny because a lot of that is just us looking at a spot. Sometimes it’s a tennis ball, but mostly the first assistant director will walk us through the areas that we’re supposed to look at—”This is one, that over there is two, there’s a spot by the door, that’s three.” Then when they call “action,” they’ll call out the numbers so you know where to look, which is hilarious. So when we’re supposed to look up at the sky, you’re clocking everyone else’s eye line.
The final scene in this sequence is Stan Edgar being driven back to prison. Then his driver’s head explodes, so we know Vicky’s caught up to him. You two exchange a look, and I’d love to know what the direction was.
Shana Stein was the director and it’s a conflicting moment. They’ve been through so much and they both betrayed each other to an extensive degree. So, in that moment, for me as Neuman, there’s a sea of emotions that I’m experiencing. And it’s really supposed to leave you in a place of questioning which emotion is coming through the strongest.
I remember Shana saying, ‘We don’t want to know exactly what’s going on, we want to feel like, ‘Is she going to pop his head? Is she going to embrace him? Is she gonna slam the door and leave?’ It’s all of those thoughts and emotions all at once. What Neuman lands on is that she’s scared and she needs a parent.
I read somewhere that Vicky was more dangerous than Homelander, do you agree?
I don’t think so. Based on the emotional state of these characters alone, Neuman is quite strategic and she keeps her emotions at bay. She’s very logical. Homelander is a quite volatile and erratic character. You don’t know if he’s going to kill you based on what kind of a day he’s having, and that isn’t really the case for Neuman.
What are Vicky’s motivations, do you think?
For a large portion of her life, she has been operating in a manner that suits Stan Egdar’s needs. Essentially, what she is for him is a weapon. That’s quite hard for her because all she ever wants from Stan is to be loved as a daughter, but she only ever gets praise from him when she’s a weapon.
So I think that’s been the goal for many, many years. I think she’s been Stan Edgar’s weapon and on this track for so long that in this season, she realizes the cost of it. It, perhaps for the first time, begins to stir something within her, and because she’s been alone for so much of this season and because she finds herself in so many compromising positions, it actually forces her to really look at herself in the mirror and assess what she actually wants and what she’s doing all of this all.
I think Neuman as a character, in general, seeks out control and positions of power to feel safe and secure, which is a really interesting thing when it comes to someone who has the ability to pop someone’s head.
I don’t think that she ever pursued politics in the first place as a means to do better or to help the world in any way. I think it’s always been something that has been in service of her own safety and security, or something to make Stan Edgar approve of and love her. It’s very human. I think a lot of us do things without actually realizing why.
The Boys is available to stream on Prime Video, with new episodes dropping each Thursday.
