When Nathan Mitchell was offered the role of the superhero Black Noir on The Boys, he was warned that he would never get to speak or show his face.
“I just jumped into that wholeheartedly,” Mitchell tells Polygon. “For me, the biggest question was: Can I still express myself? Can I still tell a story through his body movements, through the way he tilts and moves his head, through the way he walks? As long as they were going to give me space to do that, I felt really good about it.”
Ever since then, Mitchell has been a pivotal, if mostly silent, member of The Seven, the not-so-secretly evil superhero team at the heart of The Boys. As the Prime Video series comes to a close, we caught up with the Noir actor over Zoom to talk about his journey across five seasons.
[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 5, episode 6]
For the first two seasons, playing Noir mostly meant nodding silently and following orders from Vought International and The Seven leader Homelander (Antony Starr). Then ahead of season 3, showrunner Eric Kripke presented Mitchell with a hard choice. He could either reveal his face that season during a plotline that ended with the character’s death, or a different actor be the face of Noir in season 3 and Mitchell would finally get to speak up as Noir’s replacement in seasons 4 and 5.
“It was difficult for me because I was so connected and committed to Noir 1, the original Black Noir, and I wanted to see that journey through with him,” Mitchell says. “When I thought about it and as an actor, and just getting to do more with a character, it was smarter and better to play Noir 2 in seasons 4 and 5.”
Fritzy-Klevans Destine played the version of Noir that Homelander kills in season 3. Mitchell stepped into the role of Justin, an actor Vought hires to cover up the murder of one of its top heroes.
“I really tried to create a contrast between Noir 1 and Noir 2,” Mitchell says. “If Noir 1 was stoic, cool, and badass, and had a certain type of aura, Noir 2 didn’t have it together. He was a little bumbling, a little less cool. To make a character distinct and unique, you really have to lean into the contrast, because the suit is the same.”
The less competent version of Noir quickly bonded with the biggest loser in the Seven, the Deep (Chace Crawford).
“I look at Noir and the Deep as two brothers,” Mitchell said. “They have this camaraderie that develops in season 4, but they’re pit against each other with this toxic family structure that Homelander has created. They have to keep their jobs. They have to stay alive.”
That rivalry escalates rapidly in The Boys season 5. Hoping to impress Homelander, the Deep knocks out Noir so he can claim sole credit for capturing former Vought CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito). Noir then tries to win back Homelander’s favor by supporting his bid to establish himself as God. In response, Deep kills Dawn of the Seven director Adam Bourke (P.J. Byrne), putting an end to a Broadway show Justin was going to star in. So Justin destroys an oil pipeline Deep endorsed, leading to an enormous fish die off. The competition finally ends in episode 6 with the Deep killing Noir.
“It was fitting because it’s about brotherhood, it’s about violence, it’s about revenge, it’s about one-upmanship,” Mitchell says. “It’s like you’re fighting with your siblings and it just gets a little worse and a little worse and a little worse. Before you know it, you get them really bad and you’re like, Oh, don’t tell mom, don’t tell mom. But in this scenario, he can’t say anything because he’s dead.”
The first six episodes of The Boys season 5 are available to stream now on Prime Video.
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