The fourth season of The Boys aired this summer on Amazon Prime, and being the platform’s biggest hit, a lot of people watched it. But here’s the thing when a lot of people watch a show: there’s always going to be a faction of the fanbase who are not always of the highest caliber.
For a bit of evidence of that statement, we turn to The Boys star Valorie Curry’s recent social media posts.
Why is Valorie Curry speaking out about fan behavior?
Curry joined The Boys this season as a new member of The Seven, Firecracker. This is a character who is so based on Marjorie Taylor Greene that they might as well just have gotten the woman to play her. That being said, Curry kills it in the vile role, becoming a fan favorite—as it turns out, for better and worse.
Part of the deal with Curry’s character Firecracker is that she’s willing to do “anything” for Antony Starr’s Homelander. At a European Comic-Con, which had been one of her first solo appearances, it seems a fan (or fans) dressed as Homelander may have, uh, tried to capitalize on that, “demanding” Curry perform certain acts.
(For context, Firecracker literally breastfeeds Homelander to satisfy his insatiable mother’s milk craving. So yeah, the imagination runs on this one.)
Curry described the incident on an Instagram story as thus:
“Just got back from the first day of Comic-Con in Northern Ireland in Belfast, and by and large, everyone was fantastic…everyone for the most part has been so kind and so lovely. It’s really been wonderful. But we do need to talk about boundaries and what is appropriate in terms of behavior. I know people saw a character that I played do some pretty extreme things on The Boys. And I don’t care if you’re in costume, I don’t care if you’re in character, it’s not okay, and it’s not funny to demand those things from me in person at my booth. It’s not okay.”
While not getting into specifics of what exactly happened, one can put some pieces together and…ick. Yeah, don’t do this to anyone, folks. Famous people don’t owe you anything.
Valorie Curry joins more entertainers in speaking out
Curry is the latest notable figure to highlight the boundaries needed between fans and performers, with Chappell Roan recently calling out toxic fan behavior. With social media blurring the line between “knowing” someone and knowing someone, these sorts of statements are important to shake fans from the parasocial haze that’s so easy to develop.
After that first post, Curry posted an update on her stories about the situation. “Thank you to everyone who reached out after my post yesterday, and especially to @comicconnorthernireland for taking it so seriously.”
Ideally, more like Curry and Roan speaking out wakes up some fans to the reality of the situation.
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