To unwind while shooting season four of the satirical, darkly comedic, and absurdly gross superhero series The Boys, the ladies of the tight-knit cast partake in what they call “Estrogen Night.” “We all get together, have some wine, get some takeout, and just dish,” says Karen Fukuhara, who plays the mute but badass Kimiko Miyashiro (known simply as “The Female” in The Boys comics).
Relaxed outings were probably much needed this time around, too. The penultimate season delved into the devastating backstories driving the complex supervillains, vigilante humans, and suped-up antiheroes that anchor the Prime Video series, including Fukuhara’s Kimiko, whose superpower lies in her ability to regenerate herself after being wounded. “A lot of the characters are tackling their trauma, and I find that to be liberating,” she says. “It makes them more human.”
Season two already revealed bits of Kimiko’s harrowing childhood, in which she was kidnapped and orphaned with her little brother, Kenji (Abraham Lim), by a terrorist organization. Kenji later revealed to Kimiko’s closest confidante, Frenchie (Tomer Capone), that his sister stopped speaking after their parents’s murder. But in the season four finale, Kimiko drops the even more horrific truth: as a child soldier, she was forced into fight-to-the-death battles with other kids—and always won. After the first fight, she went quiet and never spoke again.
“Learning that she has also wronged people in her past adds great depth to the character and more juice to play with as an actor,” says Fukuhara, who gives a heart-wrenching portrayal of a silent but expressive Kimiko grappling with her demons while isolated from Frenchie. (The felonious jack-of-all-trades and former killer-for-hire withdraws to confront his own reprehensible actions.)
“If it felt odd. It felt weird. It felt foreign,” Fukuhara says about the duo’s scripted rift, which was also jarring for the actors. “For three whole seasons, we’ve been attached at the hip, and I’ve loved spending time with [Capone] on and off set.”
Fukuhara, however, does see a silver lining to the separation. “It was important for Kimiko to experience time with some of the other members of The Boys,” she says. Fans also enjoyed the resulting unprecedented team-ups, like Kimiko joining super-crusader Annie (Erin Moriarty) to rescue a reluctantly undercover Hughie (Jack Quaid), who was chained up in off-brand Batman Tek Knight’s (Derek Wilson) BDSM cave.
“One of the reasons why Kimiko goes to therapy is to work on her speech,” adds Fukuhara. “She realizes that without being able to audibly speak to other people, it’s hard to make human connections and friendships.”
In the finale, Kimiko and Frenchie reconcile, confessing their past hurts and absolving each other, and themselves, of their wrongs. Then, in a much-anticipated moment, they confess their romantic feelings for each other—and kiss. “In true Boys fashion, nothing can be good for long,” says Fukuhara. “We got a glimpse of a happy life between Frenchie and Kimiko, and then it gets swept away.” When the pair are heartbreakingly pulled apart in the episode’s final moments, a physically restrained Kimiko lets out an anguished, drawn-out “no,” her first spoken words of the series, outside of dream sequences.
Fukuhara actually planted the seeds for Kimiko’s verbal breakthrough back in season two, after researching and learning that muteness caused by emotional trauma can eventually be overcome. She asked The Boys creator Eric Kripke to consider her findings and make the root of Kimiko’s muteness psychological rather than physical. He agreed, “so that if we wanted to expand on that subject, or Kimiko’s ability to speak, we would have that option later,” explains Fukuhara. “Thank god it paid off.”
On paper, Kimiko’s silence could have fallen into the harmful, quiet Asian woman stereotype. After the first season, Kripke committed to fully developing Kimiko’s storyline to counter any lingering sense of those tropes, and Fukuhara appreciates the dedication. She explains that they also discussed how to mindfully portray the brutal showdown between literal Nazi Stormfront (Aya Cash) and Kenji in 2020’s season two, which coincided with the real-life rise of anti-Asian hate crimes.
“I feel really lucky that I work for a show that represents and has social commentary on things that I believe in—one of them being Stop Asian Hate,” says the Japanese-American actor, who herself was assaulted outside a cafe in 2022. She calls Kripke “a proactive showrunner who is forward-thinking and respectful of our community.”
“I hope this opens doors for more Asian female superheroes as leads,” adds Fukuhara, who grew up training in martial arts and whose background is in action films, with titles like 2021’s Bullet Train and 2016’s Suicide Squad under her belt.
Speaking ahead of the season four finale, Fukuhara is just as in the dark as fans about what the fifth and final season of The Boys will hold. But she can speculate and manifest. “I would love Kimiko to have a moment like Arya Stark in Game of Thrones,” she says, referring to the epic sequence when Maisie Williams’s scrappy assassin defeats the merciless Night King. Kimiko previously vanquished sex traffickers by wielding an oversized dildo as a deadly weapon, so the possibilities are wide open.
Fans have already asked for a Kimiko spinoff series, and Fukuhara has at least one idea in that realm: “It would be cool for Frenchie and Kimiko to have a spin-off episode where they’re on a cooking show,” she says. “I’m chopping vegetables while Frenchie’s doing all the spices.”
In addition to The Boys, Fukuhara just wrapped the 1986-set thriller Stone Cold Fox, co-starring actors who’ve also played superheroes: Jamie Chung, Krysten Ritter, and Kiernan Shipka (witchcraft counts, right?). “It’s going to be packed with action,” hints Fukuhara. She’s also preparing for a triumphant panel at Comic-Con’s iconic Hall H—and hopes to see Kimiko cosplay with a blood-spattered unicorn sweatshirt and pink panda pajama pants.
In November, she returns to Toronto to finish out the series and discover the fates of the captured Frenchie, Hughie, and MM (Laz Alonso). “We’ve got to get them out,” says Fukuhara. “The girls of The Boys are gonna have to save the boys.”