‘The Boys’ Is Ending Next Month, but Jack Quaid Is Ready for What’s Next

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Jack Quaid photographed for Collider by Hamish Robertson at the Amazon MGM Studios in Los Angeles, California on March 30, 2026.

After a very unusual first meeting, Jack Quaid talks about Prime Video’s ‘The Boys,’ fear, and staying hopeful in a chaotic world.

Published Apr 8, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Joe Schmidt is the Executive Editor of Movies at Collider assisting the brilliant team of writers and editors. In addition to working with the editorial team, he helps assist leadership in managment duties. He has written news, reviews, and features, as well as conducted interviews, hosted podcasts, covered red carpets and set visits, and produced major events including San Diego Comic-Con and Star Wars Celebration. A certified geek, Joe grew up loving Star Wars and the X-Men and can talk about both franchises for hours.

The first time I met Jack Quaid, I punched him in the face. He's a little foggy on the details, you understand, because a lot of people were throwing blows alongside me. "How can I forget?" Quaid says after reminding him of the encounter. "Well, that's probably why I forgot. Because of the punch in the face."

The charming and affable star of numerous genre darlings had been kicking off one of the biggest years in his career, which included the debut of his very first action vehicle. It was at the premiere of the bumbling John Wick-esque rom-com thriller Novocaine where countless other journalists and I took turns on an arcade punching bag customized with Quaid’s own likeness while the actor himself watched. Sometimes he'd even take a shot at his own mug.

It must be a surreal experience, seeing people go to town on your face while occasionally winding yourself up. To Quaid’s credit, he was having a blast — and even asked me if anyone had beaten his score. (I was in the low 700s, he was in the low 800s; call it strength, call it a talking point during the next therapy session. That's for him to decide.) Ultimately, he was just soaking in the fact that everyone else was having fun as well.

Quaid Isn’t Taking Any of This for Granted

As I catch up with Quaid, now on the precipice of ending his most beloved project in his career to date with the final season of The Boys, it's apparent that spreading joy is important to the actor as he navigates his own path amid Hollywood royalty. In the wake of one of the biggest and busiest years of his career, Quaid reflects on 2025 with one sentiment.

"I was just really enjoying how lucky I am to be working, period, because it's a tough business, and I'm really happy to actually be doing the thing that I love doing. I'm so grateful for that."

Quaid kicked the last year off starring alongside Sophie Thatcher in the surprising horror hit Companion, followed by Novocaine two months later. The intense yet understated indie crime drama Neighborhood Watch followed shortly after that, and by summer, he appeared alongside Idris Elba and John Cena in a scene-stealing role for Prime Video's Heads of State.

"I love that they were all so different," Quaid says while musing on his 2025 projects. "I got to show different sides of myself. That was just an actor's dream, all the various budget ranges and distribution deals."

In the span of a few months, Quaid’s roles included: a conniving villain seeking an ill-gotten fortune, a forlorn action hero who couldn’t feel pain, a troubled man attempting to do the right thing, and a capable CIA agent helping the leaders of the free world escape assassination. "I love playing Hughie, but I love that I got to expand and try out new things.”

Why Hope Is the Most Radical Idea in ‘The Boys’

Quaid can't help but smile when he acknowledges the man who gave him his first major opportunity with The Boys. Showrunner and executive producer Eric Kripke picked Quaid to be the heart and soul of a series that sorely lacks kindness, knowing his light would radiate from the screen despite a lack of superpowers. "I would not be here if it was not for Eric," admits Quaid. "I will thank that man 'til I die. We've all become a family. I know it's a cliche, but it's true."

Prime Video's cynically violent and politically prescient superhero series has turned heads since it premiered in the summer of 2019, with Quaid's role as Hughie being a strong draw for fans. Because, as rough, depressing, and uncomfortable as The Boys can be to watch, Quaid keeps us tuned in for his character's unshakable optimism. That trait isn’t just rooted in the role he inhabits, but the space he operates from in his daily life.

“What I love about what Eric wrote is that we're basically saying hope is a choice. And it's a really tough choice to make because the world is so messed up, and the easier choice is to wake up every day and wallow in despair. But if you're choosing every day to have hope, even when the world kicks you down again and again and again, it's actually an act of resistance that's a badass choice to have. Hope. It's not negative. Really, heroism in our show is everyday people doing something, little things here and there, to make the world a better place."

Quaid is not ignorant of the current political and cultural climate, especially when The Boys has only maintained its prescient analysis of American society through the lens of superheroes. The show, most of which is filmed about a year before the episodes even air to the public, has oddly mapped the real-world trajectory of the United States over the course of its five seasons.

"I don't necessarily know if we're predicting the future or if history is so messed up and almost cyclical and predictable in that way," Quaid muses. "When I first read the pilot of The Boys, I actually didn't know it was based off a comic book. Initially, I thought someone just wrote an incredible script about America and then inserted superheroes into it.”

DC stories tend to highlight an idealized world where superheroes bring out the best in us, while Marvel’s approach has focused on costumed crime fighters to showcase the world outside your window. Next to them, The Boys forsakes both of these approaches, instead using a mirror to highlight all of the ugliness in modern society. That irony is far from subtle and feels more predictive of where we might be headed in the very near future.

“Eric likes to write about our current world and then make it 40 percent more insane,” Quaid tells me. “And then somewhere between shooting it and it airing, the world rises to meet that, where it makes it about 20 percent. And that remaining 20 is just the fact that people have superpowers. It's so insane, and the world is not in a good place right now. But what's been really cool for me as a person who has regular panic attacks about the world and the way that it's going, it's been really great as an actor to be on our show with something to say and to have that catharsis through art."

In a world where "The Simpsons did it" has become a colloquialism for life imitating art, The Boys has made a strong case for having its finger on the pulse of present-day politics. The final season includes camps where “dissenters” are imprisoned for opposing the villainous and all-powerful Homelander — but the scary thing is that it was filmed in 2024, well before the horrifying name “Alligator Alcatraz” was ever a reality.

"I think that all art is political in some way, shape, or form. So it's been really, really cool to be able to do a show that does go there,” Quaid reveals. “I often feel like I say this, but it feels like the show is South Park with capes, you know? It hasn't been great to see where the world is going, but it's been great to comment on it because, for the audience, if you're able to mock or make fun of certain people in power that may not be doing a great job ... that's really cathartic for the audience, too. It takes power away from those corrupt figures as well, which I think is really important."

What Growing Up in Hollywood Taught Quaid About Fear

It's impossible to separate Hughie's optimism from Quaid's own human qualities, which emerge via the most surprising topics. A self-described nepo baby (a term that isn’t uttered a single time during our conversation, mind you), the man is basically Hollywood royalty as the son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid. But that's not the only source of talent in his family tree, as his uncle Andrew Hyra was part of the '90s folk duo Billy Pilgrim. When the connection is raised, Quaid’s initial shock gives way to a heartwarming anecdote.

"My uncle Andrew, I remember I was 4 years old, and — this is the cool part of growing up in a family full of artists — it was Christmas. He brought recording equipment for an album, and it was just laying around the house. And then one day he was like, ‘Jack, do you want to make a Christmas album?’ And it's there. It plays in our house every year at my mom's place. It's called Jack's Christmas Classics, and essentially, it's me as a 4-year-old with tonsillitis, so I'm really raspy. I'm improvising a Christmas album. Andrew went back in [post-production] and made it sound amazing."

Quaid has grand plans of going back to make a music video of this album, and reveals his partner (and former The Boys co-star) Claudia Doumit even had the recording pressed on vinyl as a gift. "I'm 4, so I have no fear at the time," Quaid says. "There's a song called 'It's Christmas Again,' and ... I'm just naming things that happened during Christmas. And one of the things is 'flashlights with Santa's face on it,' and I don't know where I got that."

That childish fearlessness is something we all struggle to hold onto. After hearing Quaid reminisce about those improvised holiday songs, I couldn’t help but ask if that’s changed — if he now finds himself operating from a place of fear in his adult life.

"I've found that, as I've gotten older — I'm 33 now. It's funny, I feel like this is me and most of my friends — you start out very fearless when you're a kid, you don't know [anything] yet, and then you lose that in a sense, and you get a little bit more fearful. I was the most fearful in my twenties, when I was starting on The Boys, because I was like, 'I love this thing so much. I don't want to mess this up.' And now I don't feel like I operate, as much, from a place of fear. My goal now is to try to get as relaxed as I possibly can, because that's where my best work comes from. That's hard at heart. Easier said than done.

"But I feel, as you do this more and more, you gain some confidence. I don't want to say I'm always at the peak of confidence. There's still fear that comes in there, but I don't think that ever fully goes away. Sometimes, it's all about how you harness that and use that to your advantage."

How Hughie Changes in ‘The Boys’ Final Season

Fear is a natural instinct, born from a place of survival. That fear can be rooted in cynicism — but it can also be regarded practically, realistically. That perspective drives much of what Quaid brings to Hughie — especially in the final season of The Boys. As the world burns around the character, as fascism spreads at the highest levels of government, as he and his allies are imprisoned in makeshift camps, Hughie remains a bright spot, fighting to bring his crew back from the brink.

"I think we're all trying not to dip into cynicism right now," Quaid says, with a sly smile that only grows as he continues to expound on the character he's embodied for the last eight years. "That is really what I love about Hughie this season. He's a character that, by all means, should be the most cynical person on the face of the earth.”

Without counting every single body that’s exploded or ripped apart, leaving Hughie covered head-to-toe in blood, the character has had to resort to guerrilla tactics in order to survive, has watched those he loves slip away, and by the time The Boys Season 5 begins, he has spent nearly a year in one of Homelander’s camps. People are killed simply for knowing him and being near him. That should be enough to break one’s spirit, but Hughie is relentless in his pursuit of a better world.

“What else can you do to him? He has a confidence this season. And it's the first time I've ever played Hughie without fear, which was fascinating, to just play a grounded Hughie who is going through a lot, but has been through the wringer so many times that he's just invincible now in a lot of ways.

There's things at stake. He doesn't want to lose people in his life, but he has a lot of confidence. So I tried to learn from him this season. I've played him as a version of myself through various stages of my life, and then this season was the first time where I'm like, 'Maybe I should be aspiring to be him, or at least try.'"

The Boys isn’t the only comic book-inspired series where Quaid gets to espouse truth and justice, as the actor is also the voice of the original superhero in one of the most beloved animated series currently airing. Pulling double duty as Clark Kent and Superman on My Adventures With Superman, Quaid is currently hard at work on Adult Swim's upcoming third season.

"That's another dream come true too… My Adventures With Superman is so optimistic and so fun. There's conflict. But it's such a happy, fun, cute show where Superman is just altruistic and good and morally right and kind of a dork, but [that] doesn't matter. He's standing up for the little guy. I love that I get to be in the dark, gritty Unforgiven of superhero shows, and I love that I get to be in The Good, the Bad, the Ugly."

Now, Quaid winces — even when he thinks he might be saying something corny, he can't help but see that the glass remains half full. "Sorry, that was a terrible analogy, but I love that I get to play both sides of that superhero coin; the altruistic, good superhero and the ‘Superheroes are horrible, actually, and here's why.’ I love that I get to play in both.”

Regarding the future of the series amid ongoing uncertainty with Warner Bros. Discovery, DC Films, and the new universe being crafted by James Gunn and Peter Safran, Quaid is confident that My Adventures With Superman will continue. Given the fact that Harley Quinn continued after the new regime change, anything is possible.

"It's still around. So I'm assuming they like it, which is great," Quaid adds. "Because they could have totally been like, 'Well, this doesn't fit in with our new purview,' and scrapped it, but they're keeping it around, and it's amazing. I also have to give so much credit to James Gunn."

Given his pedigree in the superhero space — not to mention the fact that, during our conversation, Quaid shows off his latest comics haul, including the latest issues of Absolute Batman — it shouldn't come as a surprise that the recent DC offerings have appealed to the actor's sensibilities.

"What [Martin] Scorsese is to mob movies, James Gunn is to superhero movies," Quaid gushes. "He just knows how to do it. And as a person who is vocally Superman, I cannot tell you how much I loved the current Superman movie. It was so good. David Corenswet, I've actually known for a few years.”

The two actors had previously worked together on a pilot for the USA Network called The Tap that wasn’t picked up to series, but Quaid wasn’t surprised when he learned Corenswet would be the latest Clark Kent. “He's one of these people you meet, and you're like, 'Oh, yeah, whenever they need a new Superman, it's probably going to be you.' But he just absolutely crushed it. It's that inherent goodness of Superman — the dorkiness that doesn't matter because it's out of fashion, but that's the point. He captured all of that, and I just thought everyone knocked it out of the park. I actively cried watching that movie. It was 'hopecore,' as they say, but I just loved it. It was so great."

Quaid Is a Gamer, a Horror Fan, and Proudly Covered in Blood

It becomes obvious very early on that I'm speaking with a fellow geek, one who readily recommends comics and doesn’t hesitate to discuss his love of photo mode in video games. Quaid and I are simpatico in that sense, in that we both love single-player games with vast worlds and mission structures that allow us to get lost for hours at a time. It makes sense that he'd want to see certain video games come to life and be involved in those projects. While his The Boys co-star Karl Urban is set to bring iconic fighter Johnny Cage to life in Mortal Kombat 2 this summer, I'm not disappointed when I ask Quaid what game he'd love to adapt.

"I've said this before, I'll say it again: BioShock. I would kill to be in a BioShock adaptation," Quaid says, with the utmost confidence. "I actually don't even know what character I'd be... Just to be involved in the slightest. That game was probably one of the first horror games that I ever played. That twist in that game, which I won't spoil, is incredible."

BioShock is nearly 20 years old at this point, but I appreciate his dedication to preserving the experience for people who haven't played it. He's a true gamer with respect for the medium and the journey, so I tell him that I can see him cast in the movie saying, "Would you kindly?" (Real ones know what this means.) He lets out a chuckle at the suggestion. "Let's manifest this," Quaid declares. "Let's do it."

Video game adaptations are still uncharted territory, but horror films might be the actor’s bread and butter. Years before The Boys, Quaid utilized his affable charms in the subversive indie horror Tragedy Girls alongside Alexandra Shipp and Briana Hildebrand. He then went on to star in the franchise-reviving Scream with Mikey Madison as a fellow Ghostface, and then kicked off 2025 with Companion.

When I dub him a Scream King during our conversation, he doesn't push back but does offer an alternative title — one that's more apt, given a common thread in the projects he's appeared in. "I would say I'm more of a Blood King. I'm just nonstop, covered in blood in whatever I do," Quaid laughs. "There's a moment in all of those movies where I'm covered in blood at least once. Not maybe as much as The Boys, but it definitely, definitely finds its way to me. It has gravitated to me."

The Blood King has spoken, and yet despite all of that unbroken optimism, Quaid has also proven he can play a gigantic piece of shit with aplomb. As seen in the previously aforementioned Scream, Companion, and even to a degree in Tragedy Girls, that lovable quality has been wielded in a much more sinister way.

"I love playing with a shadow self,” Quaid admits. “I use whatever quality I have. I don't know what that is, but whatever it is, using that 'good guy' thing and then subverting it and tricking an audience. I don't know how many times I can keep doing that, because I think people are wise to me at this point, but I really love playing a piece of shit.

"It's a very fun exercise. It frees you up in a way if you're not bound by any morality as a character... and you can make crazier choices. It's very fun. I remember when we were at the premiere for Companion. I remember people cheered when — spoilers — my character dies, and I had the biggest smile on my face. That means I did my job. They were booing things. This is exactly what I wanted. It's just the other side of the coin. And it's really nice as an actor to be able to do both."

How Quaid Ended Up Doing Improv With His Mom, Meg Ryan

While fans have seen Quaid play both hero and villain throughout the years, many are eager to see him collaborate with his iconic mother, the equally charming and sublimely talented Meg Ryan. He's already got a Christmas album under his belt with her brother, so I need to know what it will take to see him on screen with his mom. Turns out that might be a possibility sooner than later, as Ryan recently joined him in his world of live sketch comedy.

Quaid is a recurring presence at Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City, and has previously gushed about the shows hosted by comedic staple Connor Ratliff. That praise turned into a first-time collaboration between mother and son during Ratliff's The Acting Class show, and Quaid is hopeful it's not the last time he works with Ryan.

"That's the first time we've ever really performed together at all," Quaid says, beaming with pride. "The whole premise is that it's a fake acting class. Sometimes they bring on celebrity guests, and we do scenes. I was the guest, and about halfway through the show, my mom came out to help me with an exercise, and then she just stayed out there, and we just laughed."

To her credit, Ryan was not prepared for what she was getting into — and to no one's surprise, she still knocked it out of the park. "I wasn’t explaining the show well at all,” Quaid confesses. “'It's a fake acting class,' and she was like, 'I don't know what this is, but I'm excited to see your world...' She got out there, and she was just a natural. It was cool to see her surprising herself. That was wonderful."

As for the possibility of working with his mom again someday? That’s tomorrow’s problem — a phrase that comes up a couple of times during our conversation, whether we’re talking hypotheticals of Quaid having to learn to speak with an Irish accent for a role or even returning to the role that he owes his career to. Without spoiling whether Hughie makes it out of The Boys’ final season alive, Quaid can’t help but speak of the future with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

Is there a possibility of Hughie appearing on one of Prime Video’s many spinoff shows? "I'm never going to say no to any of that. I love this group of people so much. As long as I get to work with them, I would be very open."

After busting out his latest pickup from the comic bookshop, he also can't help but mull over the possibilities of joining a shared universe. It feels like a matter of time before he gets to step into the technicolored boots of an enhanced being, given his proximity to all things geeky.

"I'm a huge superhero, comic book fan, and I always dreamed of being in a DC project or a Marvel project," says Quaid, though he’s never lost sight of how fortunate he is to be involved with The Boys. "I'd love to do something like that one day, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be on the ground floor of a superhero universe that's totally its own thing, with its own tone, its own sense of humor. And now that show is spinning off into Gen V and Vought Rising, that's so cool... I have an eternal amount of gratitude for this show. If they ever need me again for whatever, I'm in. I'm here. I'm a phone call away."

Photography: Hamish Robertson | Groomer: Kindra Mann | Styling: Evan Simonitsch | Location: Amazon MGM Studios, Los Angeles