The first question for Jack Quaid is a softball: When did he wrap production on The Boys? But once the memories start flooding back, he goes off on an endearing tangent.
"We wrapped in July," he says. "That’s crazy. It’s so weird to have this show in my rear-view mirror. I love it so much. It has done everything for me. I wouldn’t be where I am in my career — in my life — if it wasn’t for [showrunner] Eric Kripke casting me in this show. It’s a cliché you hear a million times, but it really is a family, and it’s bittersweet to leave it all behind. It was always great knowing I had Toronto [where The Boys shot all five seasons] to come back to. I was getting very emotional about it, and the other night I had dinner with four of the cast members. I’m combining my friends from high school into dinners with The Boys’ cast. I had dinner with Erin [Moriarty] the other week. I’m really happy we’re still hanging out. It’s staying steady."
His sentiments are even more charming considering that The Boys — which starts its fifth and final season April 8 on Prime Video — has broken ground in the superhero genre as a biting, foulmouthed, graphic social satire of corporate greed and celebrity worship. No character would dare wax nostalgic, though Quaid’s Hughie Campbell is certainly the most empathetic member of the titular group of vigilantes out to defeat the sinister "Supes."
Though effusive, he’s tight-lipped about Hughie’s storyline this last go-round, only conceding that he has an ax to grind with the vigilantes’ manipulative ringleader, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban). "Hughie and Butcher are the most at odds as they’ve ever been," he says. "They need to air some stuff out before they can continue to work together." As for Hughie’s ultimate fate, he teases that "absolutely no character is safe."
From an industry family as the son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, the actor says his fledgling career was stuck in neutral before The Boys premiered in 2019. He menaced in 2012’s The Hunger Games but didn’t live to see the closing credits. HBO’s much-ballyhooed 2016 music drama Vinyl didn’t get a second season. ("I think we were renewed and then canceled.") "I hadn’t broken out in any way," he says. "No one really knew who I was."
The Boys' Jack Quaid and Erin Moriarty
Then the self-professed superhero nerd read a script for The Boys, which was adapted from a 2006–12 comic-book series skewering the Marvel and DC universes. "I auditioned for Eric again and again and again and fought hard to get the part," he says. "I thought it was so cool that someone took modern-day America and put superheroes in it." After Quaid landed the job, he excitedly dashed over to Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles to buy "every single volume" of the source material. "I just love that I got to be a part of it," he gushes.
He gets to be part of lots of things lately. Last year he was in four films, starring in Novocaine and Companion. And aside from dinners with former costars, Quaid has spent his post-Boys time continuing to voice Clark Kent/Superman in Adult Swim’s My Adventures with Superman and acting alongside Brie Larson and Lily Collins in an upcoming film. He also recently wrote a screenplay with a friend. "I’m proud that I did it, because I’ve been talking about it for a while," he says.
Looking ahead, Quaid is already excited about appearing at fan conventions to continue talking about his beloved character. "I’m down for it!" he says. "If I’m known as Hughie for a very, very long time, I’m totally okay with that."
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue # 3, 2026, under the title "One of The Boys."
