Antony Starr plays one of TV's most unapologetically, sinister villains on The Boys', a man so narcissistic that he got his sexual kinks from a shapeshifter posing as himself, before killing them in a fit of self empowerment. But even after four seasons of peak unhinged behavior, Starr admits he can still be surprised by fans' reactions to Homelander's sociopathic tendencies. Mainly, their admiration. "We had a bunch of guys that we all kind of knocked them down a little but on social media to say, 'This guy is not the hero of any story,'" Starr tells Entertainment Weekly during our Awardist drama actors roundtable, which also includes fellow Emmy contenders Aimee Lou Wood (The White Lotus), Tramell Tillman (Severance), Bradley Whitford (The Handmaid's Tale), Marisa Abela (Industry), and Sharon Horgan (Bad Sisters). "They were really glorifying him, they loved him. Which is surreal," he continues, adding that he didn't anticipate viewers ever siding with Homelander, who is openly full of contempt for those he considers lesser beings. "What I didn't expect was that people would be so conflicted around it and, you know, finding themselves finding empathy for this monster," he reflects. Monster is not an understatement for the character who has racked up the highest onscreen kill-count in the show. The super-powered villain has even been compared to Donald Trump, which the Prime Video satirical drama played up during season 4 with overt MAGA-inspired imagery and a Jan. 6-level coup, during which Homelander took over America. Starr previously pushed back against those comparisons, telling EW in December that he didn't want his character to be "a mustache-twirling villain," explaining, "It had to be a real person built from the ground up. The other thing is, I really don't like using the word 'psychopath.' I think it's such a reductive term." However, series creator and executive producer Eric Kripke acknowledged the obvious: "We're making this fun-house mirror of what's going on in culture as much as any show since Veep or The West Wing. It makes me nervous to be in similar company, but we are!" Starr has always been passionate about making Homelander less cartoony and more of a complex, three-dimensional character. That desire is particularly apparent in season 4's "Wisdom of the Ages" episode, during which Homelander visits the secret Vought lab where he was raised to torture his former handlers. "It's like a therapy session with lots of killing," Starr tells EW. "I went to Boss Eric [Kripke] and said, 'Okay, I think we can get more out of what's on the page,' and we workshopped it and went to shoot it." Initially, Homelander was cruel "top to bottom" upon arrival in the lab, as Kripke has previously noted to EW. Starr, however, wanted more intricate emotions with Homelander returning to the place where he grew up. "I think the first take of one of these scenes — and I had it in my head, I'm gonna laugh hysterically, maniacally," Starr recalls of filming the scene. "So, I did it, and we're in front of the crew and everyone, and there was cricket," he recalls. "And I was like, 'It's not gonna work.' But I think it can and I really wanna. I'm gonna give it shot." Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV. The actor remembers how the silence seemingly lasted the entire day of filming, making him nervous that his acting choice hadn't carried Homelander's mental anguish the way he intended. "Then, when you saw the sequence come out, it did hang together pretty well," he shares. "It was the process though, of being right on the edge of 'I don't know if this is gonna work out or not,' but that's to me the most rewarding place to be." The Boys season 5, now in production, will be the final run of the R-rated superhero satire series that began in 2019 and grew to become one of Prime Video's top shows. As Kripke previously told EW, many of Homelander's choices in season 4, including his gruesome "therapy session," gave the writer's room a chance to "really trigger the endgame." "It's just such a gift to know, as a filmmaker anyway, when your story's ending because you know when to just blow the doors off it and completely change the world of the show," Kripke said. "You don't have to maintain it because you've got six more seasons. You've got to squeeze out of it that it's time to bring on the endgame. So, that's what that finale was built to do." The showrunner confirmed that the big developments of the season's final episodes are setups for season 5: Hughie (Jack Quaid) "solidly learning what it means to be human," Butcher (Karl Urban) "completely committing to being a monster," and Homelander "successfully taking over every single thing and changing the country into basically a Homelander-led kingdom." While The Boys may be ending, the other spinoffs live on. Gen V, the college-set spinoff, continues on with the forthcoming season 2. Meanwhile, Vought Rising, a prequel following Jensen Ackles' Soldier Boy and Aya Cash's Stormfront, was announced over the summer. Watch the full conversation with Starr and other Emmys contenders in EW's Awardist drama actors roundtable above.