The 5 Best Celebrity Cameos In The Boys, Ranked

Television Superhero Shows

The satirical superhero series "The Boys" has done a phenomenal job of making its fictional world feel just as lived-in and established as our own. Instead of Fox News, they have Vought News, for example, but they have also included a whole bunch of celebrity cameos that make that fictional world feel a little less fictional. Sometimes the cameos are just a fun bit of stunt casting, but occasionally they elevate the scene or actually have meaning behind them. Series showrunner Eric Kripke has done a pretty good job of using the cameos sparingly but going for the gold when he does, occasionally asking series co-executive producer Seth Rogen to help him secure some of his more famous friends.

Over the course of the first four seasons, the series has brought on some seriously big names, ranging from comedy superstar Aisha Tyler (who also wrote and starred in an episode of "The Boys Presents: Diabolical") to Academy Award-winning actor Charlize Theron. But which cameos were the best? Let's take a look at five of the funniest and most impressive moments when some big-name celebrities decided to spend some time in the twisted world of "The Boys."

5. Tilda Swinton

One of the wildest cameos in all of "The Boys" has to be the voice behind Ambrosius, the octopus girlfriend of The Deep (Chace Crawford). Tilda Swinton, the Academy Award-winning actor who starred in such acclaimed films as "We Need to Talk About Kevin" and "Only Lovers Left Alive," voices the slightly clingy cephalopod. In season 4, we get to meet The Deep's eight-legged lover when she begins to beg him for attention, as he's been keeping her locked away in a closet to try and hide his, er, interspecies romance. Hearing Swinton's unmistakable voice coming from the octopus was pretty funny at first, but it actually ended up lending some gravitas to The Deep's whole situation.

Ambrosius's pleading for love and affection is heartbreaking, and becomes even sadder as her tank grows dirtier in The Deep's total abandonment. Ambrosius meets a tragic fate, unfortunately, so we won't be hearing Swinton on "The Boys" again (unless The Deep is having guilty flashbacks).

4. Seth Rogen

Seth Rogen has actually been on "The Boys" a couple of times, with cameos in each of the first three seasons. He exists as Seth Rogen canonically within "The Boys" universe, and stars in the Vought films about the Seven. In season 1, we see him in an interview with Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) for their latest film, "Black Noir: Insurrection," while in season 2 we see him in a short video at Translucent's (Alex Hassell) funeral. His season 3 cameo, however, was a bit more intense and a lot more revealing, as Rogen starred as himself in a paid sex chatroom with the Crimson Countess (Laurie Holden). 

That season 3 cameo was disgusting but absolutely hilarious, with Rogen going out of his way to really make a clown of himself and look as embarrassing as possible. It's kind of great that despite the fact that he's an executive producer, he puts himself in the kinds of roles where he's the butt of the joke instead of doing something to stoke his ego. Then again, that kind of irreverence is almost necessary to make a show like "The Boys." 

3. Will Ferrell

In season 4, the team behind "The Boys" needed a huge star to play themselves playing a coach in A-Train's (Jessie T. Usher) new movie. The movie is clearly riffing on awful white savior sports films like "The Blind Side" (and Ferrell even comments on that within the episode), but it's played as totally earnest within the movie-within-a-tv-series. After all, many of the things that people have turned on or made fun of in our world, like Gal Gadot's now-infamous "Imagine" video in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and Pepsi and Kendall Jenner's Pepsi ad, have been spoofed by "The Boys," mostly by doing them even more straight-faced than they were in the real world. Ferrell is perfect at that kind of satire and nails his cameo. Maybe he'll be back in season 5, assuming A-Train's movie did well enough at the (fictional) box office.  

2. Patton Oswalt, Elizabeth Banks, Kumail Nanjiani, and more

Speaking of that "Imagine" spoof ... In the early part of 2020's Covid lockdowns, Gal Gadot invited a bunch of her famous friends (including Will Ferrell, ironically) to sing an a cappella cover of John Lennon's "Imagine" to try and help people's morale. Needless to say, most people thought it was totally out of touch with most people's realities (in more ways than one), but it led to one of the funniest cameo moments on "The Boys." Instead of Gadot, The Deep gathered a bunch of celebs to try and sing their way into America's hearts. Among the singers are Aisha Tyler, Elizabeth Banks, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, Josh Gad, Rose Byrne, and even Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, who filmed in front of the same wall as their now-infamous apology video. It probably took a little bit of work to get everyone on board, but the final result is hilarious and makes "The Boys" even more star-studded. It also means that all of these actors now exist canonically within "The Boys" universe, which potentially opens them up to other, wilder cameos in the future. 

1. Charlize Theron

Swinton isn't the only Academy Award-winner to lend her talents to "The Boys," as Charlize Theron actually appeared in the first episode of season 3 as the star of the latest movie in the Seven film franchise. She played herself playing Stormfront, an old Vought supe who would end up as the season's main antagonist (played by Aya Cash). She doesn't play it as a joke but gives the role 100%, to the point that Kripke once told ScreenRant that he was impressed by her "commitment" to "those stupid, ridiculous lines."

He also explained that the show's creatives were able to get Theron onboard through Rogen, who convinced her to do the cameo. (The two starred together in the underrated 2019 romantic comedy "Long Shot.") It was great to see her in the episode and the weird world of "The Boys," so thank goodness she agreed. Honestly, with only a few exceptions, fans owe a big thank you to Rogen for this list. We'll just have to wait and see who he can recruit for the big finale.