SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched episode 5 of “The Boys” Season 3, titled “The Last Time to Look on This World of Lies.”
Despite playing Kimiko, the quietest member of the Boys, Karen Fukuhara is also one of the deadliest. “The Boys” star has plenty of fighting experience, having played Katana in DC Comics’ “Suicide Squad,” and years of martial arts training, but Season 3 of Prime Video’s adult superhero show threw two new challenges at her: fighting with dildos and performing a song-and-dance number.
The brutal and hilarious dildo fight scene took place in last week’s episode of “The Boys,” which featured a trove of superhero-themed adult toys in a Russian gangster’s bedroom. But instead of the dildos being used for their intended purposes, Kimiko gouged mobsters’ faces with them as a Russian version of “I Will Survive” soundtracked the violence. The dildo fight scene — which may be the first of its kind in TV history — is played for laughs, but it underscores Kimiko’s growing frustration with her powers, which make her feel like a monster.
Episode 4 of Season 3 ended with Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) reawakening and catching Kimiko in an explosive blast. She gets impaled on a piece of rebar, and her self-healing powers are unable to repair the damage. In Friday’s latest episode, she wakes up in a hospital, feeling better and having lost her powers completely, much to her relief. While she and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) are watching a video of Judy Garland singing “I Got Rhythm” in her hospital bed, Kimiko opens her mouth and is suddenly able to sing perfectly. She whisks Frenchie out of the room and performs a song-and-dance routine to the song, complete with hospital workers and patients dancing with X-rays and bedpans.
“It’s not the No. 1 song that people would recognize,” “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke told Variety, “but [writer Ellie Monahan] made this really compelling argument. Once you look at the lyrics and it says, ‘I’ve got starlight, I’ve got my man.’ There’s all these references that apply to the show that made it feel like kismet that we use this song.”
The entire musical bit is revealed to be Kimiko’s daydream, and she and Frenchie share an awkward kiss after it ends. But before they can talk about what happened, Little Nina (Katia Winter) kidnaps Frenchie.
Elsewhere in the episode, Seth Rogen cameos as a horny subscriber who watches Crimson Countess on a camgirl livestream, shortly before she’s killed by Soldier Boy. A-Train (Jessie Usher) forces the pro-cop supe Blue Hawk (Nick Wechsler) to apologize to local Black residents for over-policing their community, but Blue Hawk turns violent and attacks the crowd, injuring A-Train’s brother. Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) hit a rough patch as Hughie sides with Butcher (Karl Urban) and Soldier Boy on their mission to kill Homelander (Antony Starr). And careful listeners may have caught some old Hollywood references, including mention of Variety‘s own columnist Army Archerd, when the Boys meet the Legend (Paul Reiser), the old VP of hero management at Vought.
With Variety, Fukuhara breaks down the dildo fight scene and hospital musical and explains why she’s happy not many fans recognize her in public.
What was your first reaction to the dildo fight scene and what was the training like?
I absolutely loved it. Who gets to do something like that ever in their career? It was just such a fun way to incorporate that “weapon” into Kimiko’s fight scenes. To be honest, it’s all fun and games and it’s hilarious, but rehearsing that took a lot of time. The two dildos resembled kali sticks, which is a form of martial arts. There’s a whole sequence to these moves, and I had never done them before. That was a lot of fun to learn, and we had an amazing stunt coordinator this season. I had a fantastic stunt double who taught me all of the crazy moves. There’s a part in the dildo fight where I accidentally hit the stuntman’s head with a dildo, and I was in so much pain and I was like “I’m so sorry, are you ok?” because it was his head. He was totally cool with it, “No it didn’t hurt at all.” Also, fun fact, all of the dildos have names.
Now I have to know, what are the names?
My favorite one that I used in the sequence was Black Noir Silent Screamer. It’s like a big black dildo, of course. Hopefully for some people out there they will make it merch. I’m sure there’s a market of people who would want them.
Did you rehearse the choreography with the actual dildos?
I think the dildos took a really long time to produce because they had to get it just right. My hand is pretty small because I’m a pretty small, petite person, so the handle portion of the dildo couldn’t be too thick or else it would go flying out of my hand. We had to make a bunch of adjustments, and because of that we were using kali sticks or little connected paper towel rolls and things like that. I think it’s funny when large productions like “The Boys” use small things that I would use in my own household.
Was it hard to keep a straight face on set?
Oh yeah. There’s this one moment in the dildo fight where there’s a Mexican standoff, and the stuntmen and I kept laughing because it was just like two dildos facing each other. We realized in that moment how ridiculous we looked. It was a lot of laughing and trying to contain it on set.
What was it like shooting the hospital musical scene? It must’ve been nice to not be covered in blood and fighting again
I like to think that I got the best of both worlds this season. I had a ton of fun shooting both the dildo fight and the dance sequence. I’ve never done dancing before. I’ve taken maybe one hip-hop class where everyone in the room knew how to dance and I just couldn’t keep up. It was a challenge. On day one of dance rehearsal, I really doubted my abilities to get it together. But it was so much fun rehearsing with Tomer, and we both came up with ideas on how to make the choreography more like our characters. You’ll see Frenchie move down the hallway in this Frenchie fashion, and this is Kimiko’s dream world, with a colorful set, flowers and everyone’s smiling. All of that was incorporated into the choreography. Our dance coach was very patient with us. I’d like to think that the dance rehearsals leading up to the day actually helped Tomer and I build this bond. It kind of felt like summer camp. Physically learning something together really brought us closer. He was already a great friend of mine after Season 2 but we’ve gotten a lot closer. I don’t get to see him because he’s all the way in Israel, but I love him.
Which was more challenging to learn, the fight choreography or the dance choreography?
They probably took the same amount of time, but my doubts were bigger in the dance choreography. Learning a fight sequence, I know if I put my time into it, I can do it. With the dance sequence, it was like, “We’ll see what we get” and trying to figure out the rhythm of the movements and how do I do the Susie Q, step-touch, the lift, everything.
And was that you singing the whole time in the musical scene?
Yeah, hopefully it was OK…
It was great! You have a fantastic voice. How much prior singing experience do you have?
I grew up taking singing lessons in high school and middle school. In college, I was part of an a capella group. I love singing, I just have terrible, crippling stage fright when it comes to singing in front of a group of people. That was one of the bigger challenges for me for the musical sequence. It was prerecorded, so the pressure was a little less than singing live on stage, but you’re still kind of humming along and singing to make it look real on camera. I was worried about it, but we had gone through so much practice and rehearsal and coaching, on the day I was able to enjoy it all.
Do you get a lot of reactions from fans who don’t know what your voice sounds like?
I do. A lot of people are like, “Oh, you speak!” I’m like, “Yes, I do. I have a voice.” I like it, though. I think a lot of my co-stars get recognized a lot because they look like their characters and speak with, you know, their voice. I don’t get recognized that often, or at all really, because I’m usually very much covered in blood and I look different and then I speak. People say that I’m very different from my character and I think it works in my favor.
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