Chace Crawford Is Breaking the Heartthrob Mold

Nate Archibald will always have our hearts, but The Deep, an aquatic superhero who can communicate with sea animals, is a Chace Crawford character we hate to part with. If you are not familiar, we're talking about The Boys—the subversive, satirical dark comedy about a group of vigilantes hell-bent on taking down a group of corrupt superheroes—and its obtuse, cringe-inducing antagonist who has become a fan favorite thanks to Crawford's comedic chops. After five critically acclaimed, incredibly gory, and uncomfortably topical seasons, the Prime Video series is coming to an end in typical brutal fashion. While the timing feels right in the larger sense, some goodbyes are harder than others.

"I guess I could say, selfishly, I feel unsatisfied because I could keep telling more stories about The Deep," Chace Crawford tells us of the show's ending over Zoom from his Los Angeles home. We suggest a prequel series, because we're dying to know The Deep's origin story, while he muses over putting him in some kind of half-hour comedy. Amazon and Eric Kripke, we hope you're reading this.

Since leaving the halls of Gossip Girl's Constance Billard, Crawford has zigged and zagged his way through gritty dramas and dark comedies, showcasing his range beyond the "teen golden boy" image. With The Deep, a career-defining role, Crawford's character work is impeccable. He fully commits to the comedic beats of the show no matter how bizarre they may be and acts as a perfect foil to the unruly Homelander. But even as he closes the chapter on a show that changed the game for him, Crawford has much to look forward to, starting with the summer comedy Super Troopers 3 and, later, Dan Fogelman's NFL drama The Land.

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You have experience being on a long-running show with Gossip Girl, but how does it feel to be closing this particular chapter in your career, ending The Boys?

You can never really fully prepare for it. I thought I was more prepared after Gossip Girl. … After that, I was devastated because it was New York, and it was like my identity in the city is no more. It was this machinery of the show, seeing the driver and the hair and makeup people every day. You forget how much that means to you until it's gone, so I knew to appreciate that a little more, but still, I literally remember sitting here, probably doing interviews [for The Boys] in 2020 during the pandemic, thinking it just felt so far away. And now, it's here.

I think my last day was July 4 last year. I remember coming down the stairs, and everyone was clapping, and I just lost it. It's rarefied air to have a hit on TV—or with anything really—these days. It feels like they gotta land the plane and tell the story and wrap it up. You can't just keep telling these jokes for the rest of your life, but at the same time, showing up as The Deep every day in that suit [and] getting to work with Antony Starr as Homelander, I knew it would never be like that again, the fun and weirdness. It'll never be a show like The Boys. It's definitely one of the greatest shows ever.

What a luxury to end a show like this on your own terms. Do you feel satisfied with the five seasons and how it wraps up, especially with The Deep?

I feel very satisfied. I guess I could say, selfishly, I feel unsatisfied because I could keep telling more stories about The Deep, like a prequel or in between seasons. We've talked about it. I had one good pitch—this idea of The Deep in a half-hour comedy like Barry, something with three main characters. Or like Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood with his stuntman, something ridiculous. Selfishly, I'm like, "We could still have fun because people love it." It's fun to be a part of the conversation. Fame is whatever, but people recognizing your work for a really fun character is really a sweet thing. I'm gonna miss making people laugh through this show.

Yes, I want a The Deep origin story. I want to know where this guy came from. I think there's a spin-off to be had here.

It could be really fun. I'll have to cook on that for a minute.

The amazing part about getting to work on a show over multiple seasons is you get to grow and evolve with your character. What has been your favorite aspect of that with The Deep?

My favorite aspect of that with The Deep was getting to go dark a little bit. Evan Goldberg texted me. I can't remember. Maybe it was season 4. He was like, "Finally, we get to see The Deep go dark." [The Deep] really became a sycophant for Homelander and was doing his [dirty work]. To be honest, I loved every season's arc. Even season 2 with the church and doing the mushroom-trip tea, all that was so fun. I'm gonna miss that, opening scripts like, "What the hell are they gonna do this year?" That was the best. More so in the early seasons, we felt like it was summer camp because it was literally summer, and it was just a great time up there. Shooting the show in Toronto was a very special thing.

You have to expect the unexpected with The Boys. Were there any moments that felt wild reading it and that made you say, "Are we really gonna do this?!"

Yeah. The main one was… I think it was season 3. It was the gigantic penis and the guy walking into it. That's when I was like, "Have we jumped the shark?" It's just so funny that they write that stuff. The opening to that episode in the season was like a weird opening to a Bond action film.

And maybe second to that was Lucy the whale. I literally thought we'd jumped the shark with that, and it turned out to be so funny. Riding Lucy and [the boys] slamming into it and killing her was just so insane. I'm going to miss all of that.

This character really allowed you to flex your comedic muscles. Talk to me about developing The Deep and how much freedom you had with this character in terms of bringing your own ideas.

Well, first of all, [Eric] Kripke said to me, because I would really push, he was like, "It's way funnier if you just say the line." He always tried to keep it grounded, but I would push, and he was usually right every time. I think Antony was worried about how I was going to play it. He was worried I was going to try and be the alpha in the scene, like the actor who's trying to win the scene. And I was like, "No, not at all. I get the character." One of the first times was I'm behind [Homelander] as his lieutenant. I found the chest, and he's like, "And what is it made of?" And I'm like, "Zinc, Homelander." And we made this pause after [Homelander] asks this question, and then I'm like, "Zinc." My girlfriend just showed it to me, but people thought I forgot the line. We put that pause in there. That was this moment where me and Antony worked out that was so funny, and we realized, "Okay, we can work together. This is gonna be great." It was always doing those little things.

Antony was the master of really directing himself and driving his performance in scenes. It was really fun to watch him. There was definitely a lot of freedom. After a minute, it was like, do whatever you want in the blocking, and it was so much more freeing than a Gossip Girl–type situation when that was what it was. It was its own thing, and there wasn't enough time on that show. But this one, there was a lot of freedom to choreograph it the way you want. After a while, I was just putting on that suit, just feeling it, and he really came to life. Even if I had no lines, I could be doing something stupid in the background.

There are so many great actors on this show. Was there someone who always made you break in a scene?

Oh, God. I never really worked with the boys. Antony and I would sometimes get the giggle fits. He'd be like grabbing me and rubbing my Adam's apple so weird and creepy, and I would just lose it. And there were a few times, either early mornings or late nights, where everyone's waiting on you, but then you get the laugh. That's what I'm going to miss the most is working like that with him and those guys. Nathan [Mitchell] was also funny because he was Black Noir, and he wouldn't say anything. He's actually asleep in the chair, and I was dying laughing.

I spoke with Colby Minifie a couple weeks ago, and she was talking about how they had to stop putting you and her in scenes together because you would just pitch them all these crazy ideas for your characters.

Oh yeah, we had a moment where we would dovetail our characters, and I think it became too much, like Smokey [and] the Bandit or Tweedledee, but it was so much fun. She is one that could be a part of [The Deep's] spin-off. We could do our own thing. Colby is so talented. I think she was only a couple episodes in, and they're like, "Oh, we're keeping her" because she was so good. She was one we would always break as well.

How do you think you have changed as an actor since beginning The Boys?

I just felt more comfortable in my skin on camera having this permission to show range and to try things, and I never felt that before. There is a confidence after the first season and even season 2, where it keeps getting bigger, and you feel like you own this character and this role now and people are responding to it. There's this tremendous freedom and responsibility that you feel. It really afforded me so much personally on a confidence level. After Gossip Girl, it was the perfect thing to rattle the cage and shake things up. At the early stages, to have people within the industry really watching it and having that peer response, that was honestly pretty validating. It was just a different thing having a reaction from these people who you look up to, and it's like, "Wow, cool. They're clocking it. They can see this thing." It gave me permission to trust my instincts a little bit.

After wrapping a project like The Boys, did you find yourself wanting to do more of the same, or did you run in the opposite direction?

I found myself really wanting to do more comedy. I grew up on shows like Eastbound & Down, these comedies they don't really do anymore. There wasn't anything like that, and my God, it's just so much fun. Not that I've done that at all, but I found myself even wanting to do a gritty rom-com. But then again, the thing that scares me is going back against The Deep and playing a real adult in a serious project, like a lawyer or something dramatic. Switching a hard gear into The Land, the football show we're doing, it was playing an adult again, and it actually took a minute to recalibrate what that looked like. It was really interesting, and it was scary at first, but it was a great thing to transition into, to be able to have these really serious scenes with Bill Macy. So that scared me, to be honest.

But I want to do comedy so badly and still play that dry, comedic stuff. There's something refreshing when actors aren't self-conscious. They don't care how they look. There's something freeing about someone who's willing to make fun of themselves in a way, and I really enjoyed that, making fun of this guy and also the heartbreaking stuff. It had everything.

What can you tell me about your new show, The Land?

It was a hard gearshift. Coming in on day one, it's a whole new crew and a whole new cast, and it's going to take a while to get to know everyone again. It was really interesting. I can't speak highly enough of all the actors on it. I had a lot of work with Mandy Moore, Chloe Bennet, and Chris Meloni, who plays the coach. He's phenomenal. And Bill Macy, all my scenes were with those people. I've seen the first few episodes, and the show is really fantastic. I come from a football background. I am such a fan of the NFL, and it was amazing to dig into these real scenes. Mandy's bringing it every day, and she's on it, and it was just a nice way of working. Again, it was a tonal gearshift from what I was doing. That experience was so overwhelmingly amazing. I hope we get more [seasons].

You talk about that gearshift. How does that look for you in terms of prep, trying to get into the mindset of The Deep versus the mindset of your character on The Land. Do those look very different?

A lot of it, for me, is the clothes and feeling the body—going into the body first and the way you move. He's the GM of the team, right, so you have to carry that in first. That's a certain type of adult compared to The Deep, who is still basically a boy in some sense. There's a different confidence and a different kind of swagger, and I think a lot of it was the clothes and the eye contact and the way your energy is physically to someone.

I do a thing where I really know exactly the beats of the scenes for the week. With TV, you really have to be on it, like on the lines, and know what you want to do and almost overprepare. When curveballs happen—choreography or the actors doing something you didn't expect—you need to just be on top of it so you can adjust on the fly and still be free and open without having to reach for the line. It was just fun working with Mandy on certain scenes on the day and finding something different that you didn't really expect. To do that, you have to get to total freedom with the words. That was a different way of working than The Boys. With The Boys, it was playtime. The lines from The Deep just came out. I had to dig in a little bit more for this one, and I felt like I got to be on top of my game with these. If I deliver a monologue to William H. Macy, I knew I would be nervous on the day and had to have it. It was a lot of fun but a very different way of working.

You also have Super Troopers 3 out this summer. What did it mean for you to join such a beloved comedy franchise?

Oh my God, you have no idea. I got so many texts from my high school friends the second the news broke. They're like, "No way, man! I remember watching that at your parents' house like three times." I'll never forget the first time I saw it. We were with the golf team on some trip, and we saw it in the theater, and it was one of those seminal moviegoing moments.

The first day of filming, I pull up in this car. It's my character and his brother, and their squad cars are facing each other, but they turn and look at me in those aviators, and I just blanked. I forgot all my lines. It was such a surreal moment. They all looked the same essentially, and I literally forgot what I was talking about. Jay [Chandrasekhar] wrote me a really nice letter, and just to even be invited to come play with these guys on that level… These are SNL heavyweights and stand-up comedians and Lisa Gilroy. It was like, "Oh my God." It was because they were such fans of the show, The Boys, and that wouldn't have ever happened if they weren't fans of The Boys. They shot outside of Boston. It was beautiful early fall in September, and to go out there and play with those guys was a dream come true.

The Boys is now streaming on Prime Video.