It’s finally upon us, the final episode of The Boys. With season five, the series comes to a close, and many have been waiting patiently to see how things end – especially what the end of the show means for some of our favourite characters, like Sister Sage, portrayed by Susan Heyward.
If you’ve been following the series, you’ll know that Heyward’s Sage has caused quite the stir on The Boys. Ahead of the series finale, I had the opportunity to chat with Heyward about the final season, reflecting on the bittersweet experience of wrapping up the series, what she’s enjoyed the most about Sage over the past few years, and the most challenging scene for Heyward (which was the end of episode seven).
Check out the full interview with Susan Heyward below:
Stepping back into the role of Sage was bittersweet for Heyward, knowing that this was the final season of The Boys.
Heyward said, “Certainly, I’d hoped for more time. I think a lot of us would. Wouldn’t mind more time in the world, but with also a lot of excitement. There’s something really encouraging, exciting about knowing: Okay, this is the end, so there’s less ambiguity. Things are getting decided, things are final. The losses are bigger. That first loss in episode one? Gut-wrenching. So, yeah, bittersweet, but really exciting.”
Sage has been through a lot since Heyward was first cast as the character. From then until now, I wondered which character developments she enjoyed tapping into most.
“I love her sense of derision, her willingness to talk down to people. It’s not something I try to do. It’s something I try
to avoid in life. Like, it’s not a way to live your life, but it’s really fun to play, and to have [Eric] Kripke and the writers and the whole team supporting me, being very mean, and like the permission to do that, God, that was, that was really fun,” Heyward shared.
Sage has powers that aren’t demonstrated through acts of physical strength. So, I wondered what Heyward’s thought process was, and the specific choices she made to have Sage’s intelligence translate on-screen.
Heyward said, “No, you know, I think, especially from the beginning, Bill, one of our directors, who directed multiple episodes of the show, he talked a lot about the power of restraint, that trying to show or reveal too much would go against that, that purpose, that hope to show intelligence. Sorry, it’s something you are, and you use the intelligence, but you don’t necessarily demonstrate it. So I’m, I’m a gregarious person, I kind of tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, so in costume onset I would often get the note of like less, hide more, pull it in more, more restraint. That was difficult, but again really, really fun to get the opportunity to do.”
Probably one of the biggest misconceptions about Sage is that she’s emotionless, which couldn’t be further from the truth. This season, we really see some of Sage’s emotions come to the forefront.
“No, it was really heavy, really painful, actually. You’re right, I don’t think she doesn’t have any emotions. I think she works really, really hard to suppress them, hide them, manipulate them, but she definitely has them. In fact, they’re so powerful, she has to hide them, otherwise they’ll rule her, they’ll control her. And I think I’ve learned that, both in trying to, you know, portray Sage, and in my own life, it takes more energy to suppress your emotions than it does to just express them. It’s really exhausting to try to suppress a really natural thing; we’re human, we have emotions, and we’re supposed to express them,” Heyward said.