Pointing to his bookshelf, The Boys Presents: Diabolical showrunner Simon Racioppa recollected his first time coming across the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic book saga that has since been developed into a fan-loved Amazon Prime series helmed by Supernatural's Eric Kripke. He said, "I had read the comic books years ago. You can see them, I think they're right there, those red ones."
"I was a huge fan of the series as well. I thought that you know, Eric Kripke's adaptation of it was excellent. It's one of my favorite shows of recent times, up there with Watchmen. When Evan Goldberg gave me a call and asked if I was interested in coming on board and helping run a spin-off of The Boys, I was like, 'yes, I would love to talk about that,'" he continued. Racioppa shared that the series was conceptualized as a show that could be fully produced during the pandemic. It was devised to be a "quick and easy appetizer" to keep fans at bay while season three of The Boys was in development. He added, "I feel very lucky. Lucky to be involved as much with the show as I am."
Game ZXC had the opportunity to chat with Simon Racioppa about The Boys Presents: Diabolical, including his experience working with its all-star cast and creative team which includes Awkwafina, Aisha Tyler, Seth Rogen, and Justin Roiland.
Game ZXC: Have you seen any of the first reactions to the series?
Simon Racioppa: I don't think every episode is for everybody. That was one of the promises of the show. We wanted to make sure that we went to all of our writers and let them do what they wanted to do. Not every episode has to be for everybody. We wanted to give you a grab bag, we want to give you a lot of variety of the episodes, but I hope everybody finds a couple episodes interesting.
GR: As writer of the episode "One Plus One Equals Two," can you talk to me about what fans can expect from that episode? And where you looked for inspiration?
Racioppa: That was the last episode written. We'd slotted in the other seven writers. They were all working, and I was saving my episode for last because I wanted to see what we were missing in the series, as a whole. Like, did we need more comedy? Did we want something more serious? I started talking to Eric Kripke about it. He suggested an early story with Homelander and Black Noir. And I was like, 'that's a jumping off point'. I started to think about that, and we started to talk about doing Homelander's first mission. What would that be like? How interesting that would be? I think Anthony Starr portrays him so well on television. He's such a torture character, but he thinks he's kind of the good guy, even though, I think, he has an inkling that he's not. I wanted to get into that a bit, and obviously we only have 11 or 12 minutes, but I wanted to just open that door.
GR: What are the challenges that came with producing such short episodes?
Racioppa: One of the biggest challenges we had on the show was the schedule, we had a very tight schedule. We did the entire show in about 10 months, which is really, really fast. The other big challenge was, because we decided that wasn't hard enough, making them all different. We had to do that because that was the way to best represent the scripts. Once you set the look of the show, you usually hire your composer, you bring in an art director, you do everything once, and you're able to carry that work across the entire season. We don't have to redesign, for example, Mark Grayson, because he's the same in every episode unless he gets bloodied up or there's a costume change, but it's him.
On this show, every episode was completely different. Every decision you have to make on a regular show once, we had to make eight times. We have eight different directors, we have eight different composers. Finding eight different composers meant looking at 50 different composers to get to find the right ones, the ones we thought were best for the episode for each episode. It's a lot of legwork to do, but it's very rewarding work.
GR: The show featuredan all-star cast and writer's room. What was your initial reaction when it started coming together? Did you expect it from the get-go?
Racioppa: Oh, no, I was hoping for it. It was like a dream come true. Right? Like, to get to work with all these incredible people. Our composers were also amazing. To put the cast together and have these people just say, 'yes, this sounds like fun, I will do it' was unbelievable. Don Cheadle, getting him on board was incredible. Justin Roiland does voices for us. We have a lot of the main cast from the mothership came on board to work with us. To get to work with Awkwafina, whose work I love, was such a delight. I feel like the luckiest guy in Hollywood getting to work with all these incredible people whose work I admire.
GR: What three words would you use to tease the series?
Racioppa: Oh my god. That's a really good question. Three words— Heart-wrenching, emotional, explosion.
The Boys Presents: Diabolical is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.