The Boys Season 4 recently returned to Amazon Prime with a much-needed reminder at just how lethal Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) is.
After the Boys utterly failed at assassinating Victoria with some poisoned eye drops in the season premiere, Hughie (Jack Quaid) finally gets the politician alone for a last-ditch effort at bringing her to the good side — that is, until he tries and completely fails at assassinating her himself. The hilarious scene highlights the unique rapport these arch-rivals still have thanks to their longtime friendship. And for fans in the know, it also showcases the undeniable chemistry between Doumit and Quaid, who have been dating since 2022.
The actress recently spoke to Decider about her experience playing on-screen enemies with Quaid, especially as an original fan of the series who joined the show later on.
“It’s always so much fun to work with Jack. He gives you so much. And it’s almost hard not to laugh because he’s such a riot,” she recently told Decider. “So whenever it’s a serious moment, you always just kind of have to laser focus when the scene begins.”
She continued, “But it’s endlessly entertaining to work with Jack, and I think there’s been a real journey between Vicky and Hughie over the season.”
On the show, it’s revealed that Victoria’s been hiding her super abilities and the fact that she was adopted as a child by Vought CEO Stan Edgar as she tries to advance her political career. She may publicly pose as an anti-superhero progressive, but she secretly uses her head-popping superpowers to her own advantage. The betrayal of learning about her powers in Season 3 put Hughie and Victoria at opposite sides of the battle, despite their history.
“Now all bets are off, and and they’re having very brutally honest conversations with each other. So there’s a lot of history there and a lot of betrayal,” Doumit said. “It’s a very interesting conversation between two characters who have so much history and a loss of friendship there. It’s quite hard to have those conversations and to have that dynamic.”
![Claudia Doumit Jack Quaid 'The Boys'](https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Claudia-Doumit-Jack-Quaid-The-Boys.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=300 300w, https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Claudia-Doumit-Jack-Quaid-The-Boys.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=640 640w, https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Claudia-Doumit-Jack-Quaid-The-Boys.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1280 1280w, https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Claudia-Doumit-Jack-Quaid-The-Boys.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=885 885w, https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Claudia-Doumit-Jack-Quaid-The-Boys.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=1284 1284w)
Shockingly enough, the actress revealed that she’s always shipped Hughie and Annie “Starlight” January (Erin Moriarty) ever since she began watching the show in Season 1.
“I was a fan of the show before I came onto the show, and so I love Hughie and Starlight together. Like, to me, they’re endgame,” she told us, noting she’s “a huge Annie and Starlight fan.”
Though she has “no idea” how The Boys will end in Season 5, she warned, “If this show doesn’t end with those two A) living and surviving and B) ending up together, I’ll cry.”
For Victoria, Doumit said, “Hughie’s kind of the only real friend that she has.”
“Even though she’s lying to him 99% of the time, there are elements to that friendship where she feels like she can be herself, and that is such a foreign environment for Victoria Neuman,” she continued. “And so it’s really beautiful that she gets to have that, even 1% of her gets to have that with Hughie.”
Her friendship with Hughie also adds to how “conflicted” she is this season, as Doumit told Decider.
“It feels as though she’s pulled between two parts of herself this season, the part of her that that is in pursuit of absolute power and the part of her that just wants to run,” she said.
New episodes of The Boys premiere Thursdays on Amazon Prime.