Television

Surprise! Simon Pegg Is Part Of 'The Boys' Cast After All

the boys cast simon pegg
By Chris Evangelista

The character of Wee Hughie in Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comic The Boys was visually modeled on actor Simon Pegg. This fact lead many fans to hope and pray that the Shaun of the Dead actor would inevitably play the character should The Boys ever be adapted to the big screen. That never came to pass, and now The Boys is an Amazon TV series instead. But here's a twist! Pegg is in the show after all, but not as Wee Hughie. Instead, he's playing Hughie's dad. See? It all worked out in the end.

As you can see in the tweet above, Simon Pegg has joined The Boys cast. Pegg made his casting known at a NYCC panel for The Boys, when he walked out on stage and surprised everyone. Pegg will play the father of Wee Hughie, played by actor Jack Quaid. This makes perfect sense, of course. Back when The Boys was still being considered as a film adaptation, Pegg worried he might be too old to play the part of Wee Hughie.

"I have [read the script], it's really good. I'd love to do it, if it came about," Pegg told MTV in 2011. "My fear is that I'm too old to play Wee Hughie, now. But you know, obviously, the character was drawn, at least, around my face." Here's an image of Hughie from the comic, in case you want to see just how much he resembles Pegg.

Wee Hughie

When The Boys Amazon TV show was cast, ComicbookMovie asked Pegg why he wasn't playing the part of Hughie. "I was never up for it," Pegg said. "I mean, I played Hughie in the comics [as] Darick Robertson drew me as Hughie but [he's] in his early twenties so I was never going to play Hughie. I was never eligible to play Hughie...I'm really happy that Jack Quaid got the role because I think Jack's a brilliant actor and I can't wait to see what they do with the adaptation of it."

And now, after all that, Pegg is on the show after all. I'm guessing his part will be small – in other words, don't expect him to be in every episode. Still, this is a nice bit of fan service to make readers of The Boys comics happy.

The Boys is set in "a world where superheroes embrace the darker side of their massive celebrity and fame" and "revolves around a group of vigilantes known informally as "the boys," who set out to take down corrupt superheroes with no more than blue-collar grit and a willingness to fight dirty." In addition to Pegg and Quaid, the series features Karl Urban, Elisabeth Shue, Erin Moriarty, Antony Starr, Dominique McElligott, Jessie T. Usher, Chace Crawford, Nathan Mitchell, Laz Alonso and Karen Fukuhara.The Boys debuts on Amazon Prime Video in 2019.

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