Daveed Diggs On Oh Father’s Motivations And His Devotion To Homelander

The Boys has seen all kinds of Supes over its five-season run, but Oh Father is in a class of his own.

Played by Daveed Diggs, Oh Father enters the fold in the show’s fifth and final season as a deeply corrupt religious Supe who joins the Seven, bringing an evangelical influence to Homelander’s regime. Married to the former Vought CEO turned Vice President of the United States, Ashley Barrett, Oh Father heads Samaritan’s Embrace Ministries, a church rebranded as the Democratic Church of America, with Homelander as their prophet. Promising to put America back on its true course, Oh Father isn’t out just to spread the word of the lord, he has a few ulterior motives as well, including cementing himself amongst Homelander’s Council of New America in the process.

ScreenRant‘s Tatiana Hullender spoke to Diggs about Oh Father’s biggest motivations, and what it was like to play one of the season’s most polarizing antagonists.

Oh Father Is A Hustler And A Salesman At Heart

While Oh Father is comparable to the megachurch pastors of our time, Diggs likened the Supe, at this core, to a “hustler,” who deals in religion. The Church, however, is largely a front for Vought’s Compound V distribution, replacing the deceased Ezekiel, who was torn apart by Billy Butcher in season four.

Daveed Diggs: I think Oh Father’s a hustler and a salesman, and he’s always been that. It happens that his particular hustle is religion, and somewhere underneath it all, he’s convinced himself that it is good for people.

As the messenger of God, he has to be successful because the only way to get people to believe that God is good is if he is also doing good. It’s that particular equivalency that allows him to really fall in with Homelander because, clearly, this is the best thing for the church. This is the thing that’s going to save him and save the church that has done so much good, and also keep all this income flowing, which they really need. And because it’s good for me, that means it is God-like. Whether Homelander has been sent by God or is God or whatever, that’s just semantics. It’s unimportant. The thing that is true is that I am the messenger of God, and I’ve got to be flossing.

Oh Father’s marriage to Ashley plays a major part in his role as a religious leader, with their partnership allowing them to obtain a level of power through their connection to Homelander that they wouldn’t have been able to on their own. And though their marriage started largely as one of political convenience, season five sees it slowly morph into a real and true love match.

Daveed Diggs: It is my favorite choice that they made in the writing of this season. I love that it’s essentially an arranged marriage, but they really care for each other, and it really works. Everything, even the physical stuff, works! It’s like, “Oh man! It turns out, I kind of like you.” The more time they get to spend together, the more in love they fall. It’s pretty great.

How Season 5’s Religious Plots Mirror The Current Political Climate In The United States

The religious plots in episodes three and four have hit home for viewers, with some of Oh Father’s actions feeling eerily familiar to the political climate in the United States right now, particularly when it comes to the rise of the right-wing evangelical movement, or Religious Right, that has resurfaced in President Donald Trump’s second term. The accuracy between The Boys and the real-world issues facing the United States has even had some viewers calling creator Eric Kripke “psychic,” with the show predicting Trump’s AI Jesus before it even happened.

As for Diggs’ take on that, the actor said being on a show that feels so incredibly relevant in this current climate is part of why he wanted to be on The Boys.

Daveed Diggs: That’s why I love this show and why I wanted to be a part of it. They’re just so smart in how they’ve deployed all of these plot lines. I think the fact of the matter is that we have seen this particular train coming for many, many, many years. This is at least 50 years in development for the American right wing, and the dissolving of [the separation between] Church and State isn’t new either. You probably could have dropped this in any season, and we would’ve felt like it was incredibly prescient because it’s been coming for a long time. But in the last couple of election cycles that we’ve really seen, we don’t hide it anymore. I think it’s a smart choice for them to deploy it now.

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Release Date

2019 – 2026-00-00

Showrunner

Eric Kripke

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