Posted in: Amazon Studios, streaming, Trailer, TV | Tagged: Aisha Tyler, amazon, diabolical, interview, prime video, the boys

The Boys: Aisha Tyler on Diabolical Ep, Childhood Connections & More

The multi-talented Aisha Tyler was gracious enough to spend some time with Bleeding Cool to discuss The Boys Presents: Diabolical. The eight-episode animated anthology series set within the universe of the Emmy-nominated hit Amazon series includes the chapter 'Nubian vs. Nubian' not only written by but also starring (with Don Cheadle) the once-little kid who was obsessed with comic books, superheroes, and The Empire Strikes Back. Fans have gotten to know Tyler on both sides of the camera, including Talk Soup & Whose Line Is It Anyway?; Charlie Weaver on Friends, Terry Lewis on Criminal Minds, Mickey on Fear The Walking Dead, and many more [Ed. Note: Mickey rules!]. Hosting Prime Rewind: Inside the Boys, the after-show for season two, allowed Tyler to build a great relationship with the producers of The Boys which led to EP Eric Kripke (Supernatural, The Boys) asking her to pen one of the Diabolical episodes and she didn't hesitate to take the opportunity ("There probably was an expletive in there").

"I pitched them a bunch of different stuff, and they responded to this idea. I wrote an outline, we kicked it back and forth and I wrote the episode. I've done a lot of writing, but I've never written an episode of animated television," Tyler revealed about first getting started with the project. "One of the things I really love about The Boys is that it's really about the nexus between these very human, very flawed real people who are struggling to get their shit together but have these extraordinary powers and what that would do to a personality. What that would do to a person, how they would behave. I think we're so used to the old canon. In the superhero approach, good people are just good. They do good every time, they never make a mistake, they never falter. The Boys is a lot more honest about how people who were able to do extraordinary things might actually behave and might actually use their powers. I just wanted to explore that a little bit more."

Were there any mandates or guidelines you needed to work within or avoid when you were writing the script?

AT: Excitingly, there are no guidelines regarding The Boy's universe. The main guidance I got was to go harder, to push as hard as I could. Those guys are so wonderful to work with. Seth (Rogan) and Evan (Goldberg) were intimately involved, and Eric (Kripke) was this awesome, cheery overlord. Really enthusiastic, really supportive. It was a really positive creative experience in the sense that I really didn't get my hands slapped, I just kind of kept going until we were all excited about what happened.

Shortly after the title card, you have one of my favorite lines from the episode. Were there any other combinations besides Martin Luther King and Malcolm X that you came up with that were left on the doorstep that you wanted to use?

AT: That was actually a Don Cheadle special, but I thought it was brilliant. It was perfect. There didn't need to be an alt. 

Was this story written with Don Cheadle in mind?

AT: I didn't write it with myself in mind. I just wrote the episode, really focused on the characters. It was a relatively rapid process from start to finish, so we were really focused on the writing. Then once we have a script everybody's happy with, we're starting to think about casting. So I sent them a list of people for both characters who I thought would be interesting. And they came back and said, 'Hey, you want to voice Nubian Princess?' I was like, 'Hell yeah.' A little while after that, I got the email that Seth had approached Don, and Don said yes. It was just a massive get for us. So exciting. You can't lose with War Machine coming through.

While you didn't write the episode yourself, was this your voice coming through? Was it something you wanted to say for a while?

AT: I think so. I didn't write it for myself, but it was definitely my point of view. You're always trying to write the story you're excited to tell. What people are really going to love about Diabolical is that all the episodes are very different. Visual styles are different, the story, the narrative styles are different. I really wanted to pry open that nexus between the ordinary and the extraordinary. What happens after you blow up the top of a skyscraper, then you've got to go home and make macaroni and cheese for the kid. How do people navigate that intersection? So yeah, it was my point of view. I was Maya (Somali Rose) when I was a little kid. I was obsessed with comic books. I was obsessed with superheroes. My dad let me cut school in eighth grade to go see The Empire Strikes Back. She's definitely like a tiny version of me. Also, my parents divorced when I was a little kid. So it was modeled on the way that people were perceiving divorce back then and the way that my experience with the divorce was. They were really loving parents, always really loving to their kids. My experience was, All right, you guys gave it a shot. Now I want a birthday party. I want a pony and I want a basket of kittens and I want a cake. She was definitely kind of like a little cartoon version of like nerdy little kid me. 

Did you choose Groundhawk then or was he assigned to the story? 

AT: Groundhawk? Absolutely. They sent me a huge Bible of The Boys universe characters, and I also went online and did a super deep dive. I pulled all the characters that I was really excited about. That was a conversation about who I could exploit and what I couldn't exploit, which was really fun because I got to get a little sneak peek into what's coming next (season). Then we all agreed that these are the characters that we could use for this episode. That was really fun for me because I loved the series, but I am not a reader of the books, so I got to go do a deep dive into The Boys universe, which is really fun.

The Boys Presents: Diabolical, currently streaming exclusively on Prime Video, comes from Amazon Studios and Sony Pictures Television Studios, with Titmouse, Kripke Enterprises, Original Film, and Point Grey Pictures

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