Warning: SPOILERS for Gen V season 1.
Summary
Gen Vintroduced new characters, powers, and a superpowered academy setting to the universe ofThe Boys. Set in betweenThe Boysseasons 3 and 4 and with a story directly impacting the flagship show’s fourth season,Gen Vfeatured all the Vought Cinematic Universe’s signature pops, splats, and explosions while telling a personal story about a group of students whose superhuman abilities have come at a high cost. The series stars Jaz Sinclair, Lizzie Broadway, Maddie Phillips, London Thor, Derek Luh, and Asa Germann.
Crafting a new series with a rhythm and pace that still fits firmly within theuniverse ofThe Boysis no easy task. For help with that, the filmmakers turned to editor Maura Corey, who stepped in as lead picture editor for episodes 104 and 108, with the latter being the season finale. Corey’s long list of past projects includesKevin Can F**k Himself, the semi-improvisational comedyMurderville, and the Apple TV+ comedyAcapulco.
Gen V Season 2: Renewal, Cast, Story & Everything We Know
The world of The Boys has expanded with spinoff Gen V, and here’s everything we know about season 2 and Amazon Prime Video’s return to Godolkin.
Corey is also working onGen Vseason 2, which is an exciting, yet emotionally frought continuation of the series.Gen Vstar Chance Perdomo, who played Andre in the first season, tragically passed away prior to shooting, and producerEric Kripke revealed Andre would not be recast. Corey discussed returning to season 2 in the wake of Perdomo’s passing, putting together the show’s hit first season, and more in conversation withScreen Ranttied to the show.
Gen V Was A “Dream Come True”
Screen Rant: You started on episode 4, so you’re jumping into the middle of a show that itself is in the middle of an established universe. How much did you had to do homework and pick up on what the other editors had been doing before you arrived?
Maura Corey: Part of the benefit of starting in the middle is I did have three other episodes to draw from. [But] first of all, I was a huge fan of The Boys when it came out, so to be on Gen V was a “dream come true” kind of thing. I love this genre.
The editor, David Kaldor, who did the pilot, also worked on The Boys, and he did such an amazing job that it was easy to keep the style, and the style of The Boys universe. I was able to pick it up really fast because I did have all of this information. As an editor coming in the middle, you don’t want to compromise your own artistic abilities and approach, but having an established tone made my job so much easier.
Is there any specific way that the tone was described to you?
Maura Corey: No. I think because there was a first [show], people understood the satire of Gen V. And, having worked with the showrunner, Michele Fazekas, before, we have a shorthand. It was easy to understand her writing style and her showrunning style because of our past experience. So, for me, it was an easy sell. Not only do I do drama, but I do comedy and action. To me, this show combines all three of those genres, so it clicked in my head right away.
The Gen V Cast & Crew Filmed Extra Shots For Corey In Real Time
I know this isn’t typical for editors, but were you able to be on set at all?
Maura Corey: No, I wish. They shoot in Canada. I really wish I could have been there. Unfortunately, because they shoot and we edit at the same time. I have to be in front of my computer receiving the footage to make sure that when they’re shooting I can say, “Oh, shoot, I don’t have enough coverage for this fight scene,” or, [since] we have that character, Jordan Li who’s both female and male, “Could you maybe try doing a different transition element?” I can say, “Hey, can you do that for me?” and if they have time, they say yes. It allows them to know that we’re getting all the material we need in order to edit.
“Not Great” Temp VFX Helped Corey Get The Right Cut
How do you play into the VFX, especially with Jordan and maybe even Emma? Where does VFX end and you begin?
Maura Corey:This particular show leans very heavily into temp VFX, which really helps me as an editor. Some shows don’t like to do too much because you want to give the VFX team time to develop the look. But, because of the fast pace of fight scenes and [the fact] that we have these people with powers, we want to be able to understand what the timing will be. For instance, Marie Moreau uses her blood to lasso people, and we call her a blood bender. to time out her fight scenes, I would cut the fight scene and she would pantomime whipping blood around with nothing in her hands. I would hand it to my VFX editor, and the team would temp in these fake blood lassos. It looked not great, but it gave us the sense of where the cuts needed to speed up, slow down, or change angles.
With Emma, especially because she’s on a green screen, there are times where we wanted her to be really small in the frame and then really big in the frame. Being able to temp all of that in and understand what her size relationship to the people in front of her [was]—before it was actually finished—[was helpful.] It was an amazing experience as an editor to be able to create pacing and character development and go, “This is going to look so cool.” And it looks so much better than I could ever imagine. I didn’t see it until it aired. I was like, “Oh my God, this is so good.”
So much of my frame of reference for filmmaking isStar Wars, and I remember seeing so much about the prequels being made where it’s one person against a sea of green screen. Say you’re watching Lizzie Broadway playing Emma against a green screen—do you gain a lot more respect for actors who pull off great performances with nothing around them?
Maura Corey: A ton. I mean, I’m impressed by actors who are able to act with a script supervisor just saying the words offscreen to them. I loved what they did with Emma and Sam—Lizzie and Asa. They were offscreen talking to each other, so when we had tiny Emma, she had her acting partner there. They had great chemistry and amazing performances, and I have a ton of respect for both of those actors. Green screen or not, they had amazing performances, but having them talk when the other one wasn’t on screen gave it an even higher level of emotionality because there was an emotional relationship between those two, and it was sensitive and beautiful.
Green screen is so difficult, and when you challenge actors to create these emotions on it, I give them a ton of respect. I’m looking just at performance—I don’t know what their process is—and when I see something as special as the Sam and Emma relationship, it’s an embarrassment of riches, really. I was super psyched about their performances.
The Gen V Finale Was Restructured… A Lot
Between your two episodes, did you have a scene or sequence that was particularly challenging?
Maura Corey: We restructured the finale a lot. The script was beautifully written, but there is what you write, what you shoot, and what you get, [and] they are three very different things. When we laid it out as a scripted piece, we realized that once we got this college campus attack, we really needed to hit the accelerator and keep it going. The original structure was different, [but] we wanted to ensure that we got the maximum out of our storytelling.
There is a sequence in there where we did a montage to Rihanna’s “Desperado”. Rufus is doing a reaction video, he starts singing “Desperado”, he stops, and then we see—after The Woods gets free—this first supe. He comes out in the sunlight, walks up to a teacher, and says, “Are you human?” She says yes, he puts his hand on her face, and her face starts to melt, and that’s now our igniting incident. We know the school’s about to just get messed up. We played with what happens after that. I think we recut that montage maybe seven or eight times just to get the perfect amount of scene, dialogue, and tension so we could launch into the school attack.
Was there anything in the finale that wasn’t scripted?
Maura Corey:They did add the Homelander scene with him watching [the attack] on TV. At the very end, after Homelander laser blasts Marie and then we go to the newscaster who does all the Vought News—we shot Homelander watching that, and he gave his classic smirk.
Corey’s Reality TV Past Influenced One Episode 4 Scene
Something I loved in episode 4 was Tek Knight shooting his TV show because this universe is so good at its fake in-world entertainment. How was it to get to play into the humor of that?
Maura Corey: The beginning of my career was doing reality TV, so this played into that perfectly. I got to exercise some old muscles. In fact, we got the script, and it would say “Images of body bags,” and “Images of dead people,” or “Police tape.”
One of the things I love about a show like this is that they gave us that descriptor, and then my assistant, Jen Rosenthal, and I went into stock footage, and I said, “These are the kind of images I want to see.” We got to pick those to play into this idea. Even further down the line in episode 4, we added more of that show material because we felt we didn’t have enough Tek in there and what his show was.
There’s a scene where we see a little bit of the show, and then we see Rufus is watching it on his phone. I got the script from Michele, and I ended up doing the same thing. “Let’s find a glass of wine falling.” I wanted to get the cheesiest stuff you could get, and they let me do it. I was like, “Great. I will totally do this all day long if you want me to.”
“Homelander Will Come And Kill Me”: Corey Speaks (A Little) On Season 2
Are you involved in season 2 at all?
Maura Corey: That I am. I start very soon working on season 2. I’m going to be doing two episodes for season 2. It’s in production, and I think it’s going to be awesome.
Is there anything you can tease about it?
Maura Corey: I can’t. Homelander will come and kill me. I’d get a knock at the door and get laser-blasted. It’s going to be great though, I think.
Chance Perdomo’s Passing Was A “Gut Punch” To The Gen V Community
I was so sorry to hear about the loss of Chance Perdomo. Can you speak at all to how that has affected everybody coming into season 2?
Maura Corey: When we got the news that Chance had passed away, it reverberated through the entire Gen V Boys community. He was such a loved member of the cast, he was such a brilliant actor, and it was so sad and shocking. I think everyone very much rallied around and mourned the loss of this brilliant young man.
As a friend of mine said, it was a gut punch. I never got to meet him personally, but I had very pivotal scenes working on his performance. [Even] having not known him personally, I was so devastated by not being able to continue my editor relationship with him. And I know everyone was devastated by it all.
Corey Reveals The Boys And Gen V Scenes She Wishes She Edited
Is there a moment from this show, or even fromThe Boys, that you wish you had gotten to edit?
Maura Corey: I mean, there’s a ton of stuff. The puppet fight in Gen V is mind-blowingly hilarious, and the editors on that did such a phenomenal job on it. All the fight scenes.
Even in The Boys—I know this is a weird thing to say—Stormfront and Homelander having sex in the air is hilarious. I know the editor who cut that and she just, Nona Khodai, and she did an amazing job of making it funny and weird and awesome. The skill craft of the other editors on these shows is threading this needle of funny, sad, and action, and it’s such a joy to be a part of that as a peer.
I look at it with appreciative envy because I love that they’re doing that, and I learned so much from everybody around me. I’m a huge edit nerd. I love editing. I love our community. Editors are the nicest people I’ve ever met. We do a lot of interchanging of ideas, and I’m very appreciative to be a part of that. About Gen V
About Gen V
From the world of The Boys comes Gen V, which explores the first generation of superheroes to know that their superpowers are from Compound V. These heroes put their physical and moral boundaries to the test, competing for the school’s top ranking.
Gen V
Cast
Gen V is set at America’s only college for superheroes, where students challenge their moral limits while competing to join Vought International’s elite team, The Seven. As dark secrets of the institution are revealed, they must determine the kind of heroes they aspire to be.
