"b&a: How was the sex scene with Emma filmed? In the end, it’s just so horrific even as a sex scene, but it’s just treated so normally, in The Boys kind of way.
Karen Heston: Lizze Broadway did such a crazy take on that–instead of being horrified herself, she kind of goes the opposite way. A lot of her acting and what she chose to do in that scene really helped sell it for us because you’re focusing on that. That was really cool to see her take on it, of her normalizing it and being like, ‘Oh, this is another day and what I’ve decided to do for my choices in life’. That leans into The Boys VCU take on it as well where it is just another odd day in the life of the VCU.
From a VFX standpoint, we really leaned in and worked with the special effects team. They did an amazing job creating various bucks, including a giant penis that Lizzie could interact with. We were able to get all of those real shadows, the size and relationship of what that would look like, some of the indentation and kind of deformation that would happen with an actual penis. VFX-wise, that interaction was key. Having that giant of a penis and doing that live for her as well is amazing and way better than just having some blue form or green form that you interact with. We could get a lot of that actor interaction from the get-go that we could put into our eventual CG penis.
Pixomondo was our vendor that worked on that scene and they really took it home and did an amazing job. We worked closely with Pixomondo to get that realistic penis look. It was definitely a lot of fun phone calls with that as far as critiquing the look."