The only person who falls asleep watching The Boys is one of the boys!
Nathan Mitchell, who plays Black Noir in the gruesomely entertaining Amazon Prime Video series, has fallen asleep twice while filming the show. He described both incidents to Digital Spy, the first of which happened during season 2:
“So in season 2, it happened . . . I woke up mid-take. I was like, ‘No one’s going to notice.’ And I just go. And afterwards, I think it was Jessie [T Usher] or Erin [Moriarty] who was like, ‘You were asleep then, weren’t you?'”
The second occurred during season 3. Although it’s possible that Mitchell was pretending to sleep in this instance, the curse in his response to Eric Kripke implies guilt:
“In episode 1, we were filming . . . there was the premiere, the Dawn of the Seven scene. We were watching it in the theatre. It was 2am in the morning. I was like, ‘I’m not going to fall asleep, I’m not going to fall asleep, I’m not going to fall asleep.’
Erin and Jessie are behind me, and I’m like… [does action that makes people laugh] And I’m like, ‘It didn’t happen. Nobody saw it. It’s OK.’
Then I go over to [showrunner] Eric [Kripke], and I’m talking to him, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, that thing you did? When you were pretending . . . That was really funny, when you were pretending to fall asleep.’ I was like, ‘Shit.'”
It’s infinitely easier to fall asleep playing Black Noir than any other character. He’s completely silent and covered in dense black threads from head to toe. If Mitchell falls asleep in a scene where his character is not expected to move, no one will notice. “That’s the beauty of that mask,” Mitchell wryly proclaimed.
Check out Black Narcolep—er, Noir in season 3 of The Boys, which is rolling out on Amazon Prime Video.
