Eric Kripke Explains Samuel L. Jackson’s ‘The Boys’ Cameo

SPOILERS: This post contains details about The Boys, Season 5 episode ‘The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk’

With two episodes of The Boys left, Eric Kripke managed to squeeze a celebrity cameo into the penultimate that had some fans doing a double take.

The creator of the Prime Video series, which premieres its finale May 19 in 4DX theaters before it’s available on streaming the next day, recently revealed how Samuel L. Jackson came to voice The Deep’s (Chace Crawford) hammerhead shark friend Xander in this week’s episode ‘The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk’.

“A lot of the cameos we bring into the show are because Seth Rogen or [executive producer] Evan Goldberg have a relationship with them and can make a call,” he told Polygon. “I lean on them a lot for that stuff.”

Following Xander’s appearance in this season’s premiere episode ‘Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite’, during which he gave The Deep a ride to hunt down A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), Xander returns in the penultimate to threaten his former friend, who is responsible for a pipeline that wiped out much of the ocean’s population.

Kripke said, “We wanted a really distinct voice and who has a more distinct voice in Hollywood than Sam Jackson? So we just went to his agent. He was our first choice, and we were like, ‘Does he want to do this?’ It was really just taking a flyer. But then it came back, Oh yeah, he likes the show and totally, he’ll do it. Boy, that’s a bucket list moment, man, of Sam Jackson reading your dialogue.”

Xander is not the first familiar voice to grace The Boys, with Tilda Swinton lending her vocals to The Deep’s octopus lover Ambrosius in Season 4.